Reset
by Pitry
Summary: A sort of Reset AU, sort of time travel, definitely The-Doctor-Stuck-On-Earth-Working-With-Torchwood story, complete with the recommended daily doses of Bilis Manger.
1. A Movement Is Accomplished In Six Stages

The Planet Earth, as is well known throughout the galaxy — at least, at a certain age — is not a particularly large planet. Some would define it as "medium-large", some would be more kind to use "respectable size, definitely!" while others might point out they've seen bigger and, well, more impressive, because while size is definitely not everything, it still counts for something. However, all of those commenting on its size would agree it's definitely not _small_. Therefore, when thinking about the size of the planet, one might find the possibility of not one but two alien-related organisations being both based in the rather average and unimportant city of Cardiff to be somewhat unlikely. Especially, as it turns out, in the early 21st century, when the inhabitants of this respectably sized planet have only recently and slowly been given proof of their existence.

And yet, here is Captain Jack Harkness of the Torchwood Institute, standing together with Doctor Owen Harper as the two are trying to save the life of Doctor Martha Jones — inside the Pharm, a medical facility exploiting extra terrestrial life forms on Earth. Needless to say, they are all within the vicinity of Cardiff.

Three of the Captain's other operatives are exploring the compound itself — or, rather, the place where the aliens are being kept. In Captain Jack's righteous anger, he's about to order all of the captive creatures killed — a killing of mercy, preventing the poor things any more suffering. He really does believe he's doing them a favour, because he knows he would never be able to bring them back home, and would probably also be unable to undo the damage already done to their bodies.

And, under certain circumstances, he gives that order, the compound is brought down, weevils, mayflies and other creatures die, and so do Doctors Copley and Harper, one a renegade medical manager, another a mortal Torchwood operative who was in the wrong place — in front of a gun — and in the wrong time — directly after that gun was fired.

However, under these particular circumstances, things don't exactly go according to plan. Doctor Jones is being rescued. Doctor Harper carries her out of the lab, as Doctor Copley already left. And Toshiko Sato, technical genius and Torchwood employee, tells the good Captain of the creatures in the storage. A weevil, used for extracting pesticide. In the next tank, a big bug, out of which a drug is being synthesised, with unfortunate results. And a man in a brown suit who would have had beige trainers had his captors not taken them away, inside a third tank. He looks completely human, Toshiko reports, he even just opened a weary brown eye and looked directly at her, intelligence radiating from him like the sun in a summer day. In Morocco. But the caretaker insists. It only looks human, she says.

And when Doctor Harper peeks into the next room and asks what the hell a Police Public Call Box is, Captain Jack Harkness runs faster than he ever did in his life, long as it may be.

X

"Uh — Jack? He's got two heartbeats."

"He" referred to the Doctor, of course, but Owen didn't know that detail yet. Jack never got around to telling him. He just burst into the compound, fire in his eyes — and in his gun — and broke the tank containing the man, disconnecting the assorted wires attached to him from the surrounding machinery. The man — alien — thing — whatever — coughed several times, looked at Jack, tried to smile — and lost consciousness. By that time, Martha was already awake and aware, calling for the man and trying to wake him up, while Jack was shouting at Tosh "Shut this place down! Right now, do it!" and the seven of them left the warehouse in a hurry.

It didn't take long for Jack to find Copley, and as soon as he did, his gun was aimed at the scientist's head. "Tell me why I shouldn't shoot you!" he shouted. "Give me one good reason not to kill you, right now."

It wasn't Copley who answered, but Martha. "Jack, if they did something to him, we're going to need Copley to tell us what it was. And besides," she hesitated, but continued nonetheless, "besides, you know he wouldn't want that."

Jack just nodded, and Owen found himself in the SUV, trying to wake their new patient up while, at the same time, making sure Martha was going to be alright — her heart was racing, her temperature was still a couple of degrees too high, and had he had any chance of taking her blood pressure, he knew he wouldn't like it, either — and hoping Jack's reckless driving wouldn't get the four of them killed — especially considering fifty percent of the present company had just barely escaped death by Copley.

Well, if they all died here today — all but Jack, he corrected himself mentally — at least Gwen, Tosh and Ianto would live on to tell the tale. If they manage to follow Jack's instructions and bring the blue box and the sadistic son of a bitch back to the Hub.

But no, despite Jack's best attempts, they made it to the hub in one piece. Martha was already better, able to walk properly and even help Owen and Jack bring the alien into the hub. Which meant they could all fully concentrate on the problem of the alien in Torchwood. The alien Torchwood was trying to help. Inside their hub. What a day for irony.

Owen still insisted on taking Martha's blood pressure — he was right, he didn't like it — and ordered her to stay on the sofa, wait for Ianto to come back and ask him for a good cup of tea, and mainly, not go anywhere or do anything exciting.

"But the Doctor - !" she protested.

"Martha, you're no good to him dead. Besides, I get he's all important to the two of you, but in my priorities, you come first. Now I won't be able to treat him properly 'til I know you're okay, so stay here and _relax_." He could see the gratitude in her eyes — and yes, something more when he told her his priorities — but she obviously was still nervous.

"Just let me know what's going on with him, okay?"

"Promise," he smiled at her and rushed back downstairs, towards his new patient.

"Take his vitals," he could hear Jack shouting from his office. "Blood works, too, even though I don't think they're going to make a lot of sense — I'm just calling up old medical records on him."

So Owen took his blood, took the vitals, and when the blood pressure made no sense and the machines he hooked his new patient up to claimed his heart was either not pounding at all or pounding at a rate that should have left a hole in his ribcage by now — and Owen wasn't quite sure which option would be better — he took to listen to his patient's chest in the old fashioned way.

That was, of course, when he learned a thing or two about alien anatomy he was unaware of before.

"That's because he's got two hearts," Jack was walking down the stairs now, carefully carrying some printouts from his computer. "Have you got those readings? We should compare them to these — now I don't know how reliable exactly they are, as they were taken right after he regenerated apparently, and by all accounts it wasn't the most smooth regeneration, but that's all we have to work on — unless you know something about Time Lord physiology," he called out upstairs.

"Sorry, Jack," came the answer from Martha, sounding as frustrated as Jack was.

"So he is an alien," Owen surmised after taking a look at the papers Jack gave him. "We saved him," he fixed his gaze at Jack, refusing for a moment to have another look at the papers and figure out just how different his own readings were and what could have caused this, "but not the rest of the aliens. Why?"

"They were too far gone," Jack said quietly.

As a result, Owen pushed his own papers towards his boss. "And he isn't?"

Any unbiased observer would have had to admit Owen had a point, at the very least. The blood pressure didn't make any sense in either reading, but in completely different ways. The hearts were beating way too fast, even if the original readings already seemed too fast. The skin, which must have been too cold for comfort when the figures were written down in the old report, was now radiating heat, too hot, way too hot, even for a human. And they both knew that in a couple of minutes, when Torchwood's alien technology would finish analysing the blood sample it was given, the results will have shown so many foreign elements even a junkie volunteering for human tests in order to get his high from anything would seem clean in comparison.

That's usually the case with labrats, anyway. Or other fluffy rodents. Or monkeys — or anything else that's been used for experimentation by pharmaceutical companies in the early twenty first century. Aliens are no exception.

"We need to give him a chance," Jack said curtly.

"I wouldn't even know where to start," Owen said, and it wasn't a question, or a possibility, or even a request. Just a plain, simple fact. Set in stone.

"Do your best anyway," Jack said, and checked on Martha briefly before rushing outside, looking for the rest of his team, expected to bring with them security tapes, experiment documentation, a scientist without a conscience, and a blue box. Their late arrival was completely and utterly the result of that blue box, he knew, but there's no way he would have left it there.

In his little working place, Owen sighed and pulled the paper out of the alien machine. "And what have we got here?... Let's see how truly wasted you are, alien boy."

His patient didn't wake up.

X

Five minutes later, Gwen and Ianto were escorting their new prisoner down to the vaults, carrying a bag full of documents and tapes, while Tosh was outside, giving directions to the lorry driver.

"Yes, yes, just stop here — we'll handle the box from there, thank you," she rolled her eyes at her boss and gave the driver his tip.

"Jack, I don't know how we'll handle it from here. How is this box going to fit into the Hub? We can't leave it here!"

"Leave that to me, go back inside," he just told her and entered the box. Tosh might have mumbled a thing or two about her insane boss, but was glad the headache of trying to figure out a way to move that thing was no longer hers. Following her two teammates, she entered the Hub through the front door.

"Martha!" she called when she saw the medic up and about, standing in the autopsy room above the alien together with Owen. "How are you — "

"I'm fine, really, I am," Martha said, smiling a weary smile. "Owen did good — for once."

It was a measure of how occupied Owen was with his latest patient that he didn't even bother to comment, just muttered something under his breath as he tried injecting a different drug into that patient's systems.

He wasn't occupied enough to miss the sound of ancient engines appearing out of nowhere inside the Hub, nor the wind that started up from nothing inside the closed space. Or to notice there was now a blue box in the middle of his super-secret day-job base, where a second ago there was no sign of it.

"What the hell?" it wasn't Owen, but Gwen, who came back from the vaults with Ianto by now — and was answered both by Martha exclaiming "oh, it's working!" and by Jack, stepping out of the box.

"But?... How?..."

"You can fly this thing?" Martha seemed to be unbothered by the idea of boxes showing up out of nowhere.

"Just a bit. Not enough to risk travelling the universe on my own — but you know, sometimes I think he doesn't know enough, either! — but enough to move it a couple of feet."

"It's his spaceship, isn't it?" Ianto caught up. "The blue box. But that would mean — " he turned to look at Owen's patient.

Jack remembered he never actually told them who their new guest is.

Gwen's eyes grew wide — "that's the Doctor? Over there? But — "

"Ianto, would you accompany me to the vaults?" Jack cut the conversation before this could turn into an all-Torchwood argument — the way they tend to. "Gwen, Tosh, if you could go over these reports and try to figure out what they gave him and how to undo it, Martha and Owen, I'm assuming you know how to treat your patient."

And he was gone, Ianto following close behind.

"This isn't going to end well," Tosh remarked as the two of them were gone, but still sat down next to her computer to go through everything. Down in the autopsy room, Owen was questioning Martha about everything she could possibly remember concerning the Doctor's physiology. They were both unhappy the answer was 'not much'.

And "not much" was apparently all they could do. Knowing his boss's capability of ruthlessness, Ianto was more than surprised to see just how self restrained he was during those hours he questioned Copley, as they carefully reconstructed what exactly was done to the Doctor — and even more surprised at how, at the end of it, Jack just walked out and locked the door behind him, not hurting a hair on Copley's head. By the time they got back, Gwen and Tosh had also had a fairly good idea of what they were facing, and Owen and Martha did their best to adjust whatever drugs they were giving the Doctor to the new information.

But as his body temperature went down, his hearts started beating a bit slower, and the rest of his vitals slowly returned to those on record from the old UNIT files, it became obvious that if their new alien friend was going to wake up, he would do so on his own. Days went by as the world refused to stand still and aliens didn't quite realise Torchwood were busy with other things and kept on coming in through the rift and in spaceships and - well, in whatever weird ways they had of finding Earth, really. And most of the time the team would go out, leaving one of the medics or Ianto in the Hub, to just keep an eye on things and their patient, who kept on sleeping in Jack's room undisturbed. Yes, at least it was definitely sleep now, rather than unconscious coma — "see that twitch? He's dreaming, I'm sure of it." — but such an unnatural sleep was not a lot of comfort, especially as none of the alien experts knew when he would wake up. Most of them didn't mind — well, not that much, anyway. But they were unable to ignore how preoccupied their boss was these days, how he would go back into that little room whenever he could spare a minute, and how little sleep he himself got in the meantime.

It could only have been a relief then when, a week later, they were all sitting and trying to figure out what exactly was the device they salvaged from Henry Parker's house when a thin, tall figure, clad in Ianto's old pyjamas, shot through the Hub, entered the blue box they all got used to seeing there by now — if not entering it, which was strictly forbidden by Jack — and slammed the door behind it. It was another half minute before those engines were heard again, and the box was gone.


	2. Exit Wounds

"Doctor!" Jack called out, but was too late. The Doctor either didn't hear him — or, more likely, as Jack had to admit — just didn't care. The Tardis disappeared right in front of their eyes.

"Well, that was… different," Owen commented. "Does this mean life's finally going to become normal again round here?"

Martha already followed Jack towards one of the computers. "Do you think you can track him down?" she asked. "Do you have any sort of equipment for that — the vortex manipulator perhaps, I remember — "

"There won't be any need for that," Tosh suddenly commented — and pointed with her pen at the screen. And right there, through the CCTV, they could see the Tardis parked in the middle of Roald Dahl Plass, right above the lift. Jack raised an eyebrow at the two of them before taking the more practical — if somewhat less impressive — way out.

To his credit, he tried knocking first. But after there was no reply — including to Martha's "Doctor, it's us, can we get in for a moment?" — he inserted his key into the keyhole and opened the door, signaling the rest of his team to stay outside.

"Doctor?" he called tentatively. No reply.

"You don't think he passed out again?" Martha whispered behind him — she, of course, was exempt from the "stay here!" rule when it came to the Doctor, if only because Jack knew she would never listen, anyway.

"I'm perfectly fine, thank you very much, now if you could just leave," they heard his voice from somewhere below. Jack shot a glance at Martha and advanced further — and yes, there he was, the Doctor, deep inside his time machine, accompanied by the unmistaken buzzing of the sonic screwdriver.

"You were asleep for over a week," he pointed out.

"That happens."

"You're still not well, Doctor," Martha joined in, "we need to make sure you're alright before you take off again."

"I'm perfectly fine, it's just this stupid ship that keeps on breaking down, so if you could just leave, the telepathic field is low enough without the two of you here confusing her any longer," he ranted, still not getting up.

Jack and Martha shared another look. "Doctor… they didn't touch the Tardis. We checked. If there's a problem with the telepathic field it's not her, it's — "

The Doctor emerged from within, looking thinner than usual and despite his long sleep very, very tired. "I can't hear her, Jack."

X

"Ouch!" the Doctor looked up, defying his tormentor.

"If you don't sit still, I'm going to poke you a lot more!" Owen retorted.

Taking the most current tests from the Doctor didn't necessarily need all seven people present. The Doctor would have been fine with Owen as his temporary Doctor, Martha, who was indeed his first choice for temporary Doctor but refused flat out to do anything while he's awake, and Jack, just for good measure, or, as the Doctor put it, to make sure any curiosity about alien physiology from Owen's part would not be followed — and none of Owen's apathetic shrugs managed to communicate just how much he didn't really care to the Doctor. But Jack just couldn't deny all the fun from Gwen, Ianto and Tosh, especially after Owen's refusal to take the tests inside the Tardis, as was the Doctor's original intention, and they moved to the autopsy space.

The Doctor's attempts to remain dignified were failing magnificently, Jack noted quietly to himself.

"You're poking me as it is, no matter what I do, no wonder Torchwood found a sadist for a Doctor, the job you do — "

"He is more than 900 years old," Owen turned exasperatedly to Martha. "How can he be such a spoilt brat after 900 years?"

"Because he's used to getting what he wants," she smiled at the Doctor, who just squirmed again as Owen was having another go at drawing his blood.

"That's it! Enough! If you want me to do any more tests on him, you're going to have to sedate him, I'm no longer — "

"See? I told you! All you're interested in is doing tests on the alien and — "

"Doctor, stop it," Martha eyed him, and he calmed down.

"Sorry," he mumbled. "Not a lot of good memories of Earth doctors sticking needles in me."

She remained quiet, at a loss as to what to say. But to his credit, the Doctor sat as rigid as a statue for the next several minutes.

"There," Owen finally announced as the machine next to him stopped beeping. "You got your results, I'm out of here, Martha, next time, you do it and I'll watch the circus from up there with the rest of the innocent bystanders."

"There will be no next time," the Doctor muttered quietly, but grabbed the paper to have a good long stare at it.

"Anything catches your eye?" Jack tried, but the Doctor only answered with a "hmmm" and then was already walking thoughtfully towards his Tardis, oblivious to the people around him.

"So, what do you say, three days?" Jack looked at Martha, slightly exasperated.

"Four," she answered.

X

In the end, it was five days before the Doctor emerged again and pronounced the records incomplete and that he needed more information. "I've got quite enough knowledge about my own species' anatomy, I'll have you know," he added, annoyed, when Jacked dared suggesting otherwise — as he would. He was, after all, the foremost expert on Time Lord physiology in the universe. Jack tried to point out he was also the _only_ expert on Time Lord physiology in the universe, but the Doctor wasn't having any of that and instead sat down and refused to give Tosh her computer back for a whole day. Jack knew he had to do something, if only to stop Tosh from complaining none of her projects were getting anywhere this way and she has very important deadlines — she had, of course, Jack knew better than to argue with that. But in the end it wasn't Tosh's pleas but the Doctor's frustrated, quiet sigh that made Jack mention what he never meant to — that little bit about the scientist in the cells.

No. Of course the Doctor wouldn't like it. Jack was enjoying the lecture even less when the Doctor suddenly stopped mid-sentence, turned around and asked, almost violently, "What else have you got there then?"

This time of the year — weevils. Not a lot of weevils, mind. They had Janet, of course, who's become some sort of a regular resident in the Torchwood cells — even when they let her go, she kept on coming back. Well, coming back and trying to eat people, of course, but coming back all the same. Owen kept on threatening he'll start a research on Weevil Housebreaking when Jack snapped back that he's a doctor, not a xenobiologist, and Tosh said something about watching too much Star Trek. It was an annoying, unproductive, and somewhat creepy conversation when it happened, but Jack would rather have it again than listen to the Doctor's present rants about Torchwood, inhumanity, Torchwood, cruelty to the universe's intelligent and semi-intelligent species, Torchwood, how this could all have ended peacefully had Jack called him about it in the first place and no, he doesn't care it was back when Jack was abandoned by him and searching for him anyway, and Torchwood.

Jack simply stopped listening at some point and led on, opening the cell — the one with Janet in, first. He knew the Doctor was more than capable of dealing with a murderous weevil, even if he was a bit out of shape now — and whatever it was that ended up with him allowing himself to be captured by Copley — but he had an anti-weevil spray, just in case.

"All yours," he still told the Doctor, and the Time Lord shot him a dirty look before entering the cell.

"There, there, it's alright now," he murmured towards the weevil.

Jack expected silence, Janet freezing in her place, growling, jumping at the Doctor — anything but what actually happened. Because instead of acting like a normal, proper weevil — and you know you're in the wrong job when this becomes an acceptable sentiment — Janet just edged towards the end of the cell, as if afraid of the Doctor — and then she knelt in front of him.

"So they _are_ time sensitive!" he couldn't help but say, finally happy at proving _some_ theory about these weird creatures right, and Ianto behind just murmured, "King of the Weevils".

"Nah, it's death they're afraid of. It's alright, I'm not gonna hurt you, you're safe, all alright now," the Doctor advanced towards the weevil, trying to calm it down before catching its head and _listening_.

"They're a wandering species. Like birds. Sensitive to the rift. When their world is suffering — well, winter, I s'pose — they go through the rift to someplace warmer, and then go back in the summer."

"Huh," was Jack's best reaction. "And how long does this take, exactly?"

"Oh, about 50 years? Something like that. The rift would open automatically when it's time for them to go home — don't stop them," his fingers lost contact with the weevil as he turned back to Jack.

"Wouldn't dream of it — now, shall we?"

"Yes, although I would prefer you not locking them up in a cage like that," the Doctor said severely.

"She keeps on coming back," Jack shrugged. "Maybe she likes it."

The Doctor said nothing, just waited for Jack to open the cell holding Copley. The scientist has apparently heard nothing of the conversation — he turned white as a ghost when he saw the Doctor. The Doctor, for his part, said nothing, just stood there, in the doorway, his arms crossed across his chest. Jack didn't have to look at him to know exactly the expression he was wearing — and boy, was he glad he wasn't at the other end of this stare.

"What — what do you want, then?" Copley finally managed, rattled by the Doctor's gaze.

"These experiments," the Doctor said coldly, not sitting down — or moving his hands away, for that matter — "what did you leave out?"

"I — I don't understand," Copley swallowed, trying to stabilise his voice.

"You left something out. Out of the records. Out of what you told Jack here. What was it?"

"I told him everything!"

"No," the Doctor said softly. "You didn't."

They weren't even sure. He had to understand. They only started experimenting on telepathy — telepathy, damn it! — several months before. That solution has done wonders with each and every alien species they gave it too, they could almost _see_ their thoughts, right there, shown on the computer! And he was so human, looked so human… they weren't ready to start human experimentations. Would he have given it to humans when the only basis of comparison was aliens? And regular laboratory animals were no good either, not enough intelligence. They had to try it on something else… and he was so human. How could they have known he'd react so badly to it — yeah, he wasn't doing all that well before, but he was almost comatose after they gave it to him, just three days before Torchwood barged in and ruined everything.

"I was afraid," Copley gestured at Jack. "Afraid of what he might do."

The Doctor nodded once, betraying no feelings. He had his answer, he didn't have to spend a single minute more in that cell. He turned to leave.

"What will you do with me?" Copley dared asking, at last.

"I'm going to let you go," the Doctor said quietly.

"Jack!" Ianto looked shocked, but Jack didn't override the Doctor's word, just turned to him in question.

"Doctor?"

"But we'll be watching, Torchwood and I. You won't go back to what you were doing before," and they all could hear the threat in this statement. And then the Doctor just turned and left.

Near Torchwood's entrance, after Jack and Ianto half led, half dragged their prisoner above the vaults and into the fresh air, Jack stopped. "Now the Doctor might not always remember to check on you, or wouldn't want to. But you can be rest assured we will. And I don't have the same problems the Doctor does with hurting bastards, so you better remember his warning," he said. "And just remember this — that alien there — he's more of a human being than you. Or me," he added, whispering in his ear. "I would have killed you. Go."

And Aaron Copley did.

X

It's incredible, the impossible things you get used to. The members of Torchwood — and their now new attaché — found themselves not even blinking when they walked into the hub in the morning and saw a big blue box in front of them. The Doctor himself wasn't a problem — he rarely left his box. He did come out, every once in a while, showed up to grab something to eat or say something to Jack or Martha, and these were the awkward moments when none of the others knew what to say.

It sometimes got even more awkward than that. Gwen didn't even see him coming out of his box until he stretched a hand and took a slice of the pizza next to her.

"Oh!" she jumped.

"Sorry," he mumbled. "Didn't mean to startle you, just smelled the pizza and remembered I was a bit hungry — you don't mind, do you?"

"No, no, of course not. Uh — Doctor?"

"Yes?" the alien was already halfway back to his spaceship, but turned around to look at her, puzzled. This must have been the first time she actually started a conversation with him by her own initiative.

"It's just that — I don't want to offend you, you know — I know you've been here for a while — but we've sent the invitations ages ago — it's a small church, you know, not a lot of space — and Rhys' parents, they're not really — "

"Oh, the wedding?" he looked almost terrified at whatever it was she might be trying to say. He's met Rhys once — bloody disaster, that was, Rhys immediately took the defensive — "who the hell is he?" he demanded, and Gwen had just mumbled something about an alien friend of Jack's, which ended with Rhys muttering he doesn't _really_ want to know — but the idea of the wedding has never actually sunk in, apparently.

"Yes," Gwen nodded now in response to his question. "It's just that we didn't know you'd be here and there isn't a lot of room, and you see, my parents don't exactly know what I do, so I'm trying to keep the number of aliens in the wedding down to a minimum, so — "

"Oh, no no no no no no no no! That's fine! That's perfectly fine! I wouldn't want to get in the way, it's alright, don't worry!" he said with very visible relief.

"Oh, you don't mind! That's great! I mean, we don't want you to feel — but then you don't know anyone but Jack and I'm not sure he's coming either and — "

"It's okay, really, Gwen, it's okay, I need to fix her up some more, I'd love a bit of peace and quiet here, really, don't worry about it, seriously, it's nothing, it's — " and he escaped into the safety of the spaceship, allowing Gwen a sigh of relief. There was no way she would have an alien in her wedding day.

Reality, of course, turned out to be a bit different, what with the shape-shifting alien who's turned her into an incubator a day before the wedding. Jack ran into the Tardis when he got the phone call, hoping the Doctor might actually prove to be some help, but the Doctor was nowhere to be found and frankly, Jack didn't have the time to search the entire Tardis for him, so he left with Owen on their own when it turned out things were about to get messy. Gwen still didn't seem to mind, though — she was positive the wedding would have ended with retconning the entire guest list had the Doctor been there anyway — and added a scathing comment to Jack that his alien friend would have probably been the reason for the usage of the amnesia pill. When they came back, bloodied, tired, but happy, the Doctor was out of his box, going through something on Tosh's computer. He sniffed them for a bit, made a dry comment about Torchwood's methods, and once again retreated into his own box.

Jack tried asking him every once in a while why wouldn't he come out to help them a bit, after all, they could use his expertise and maybe the encounters with the riff-raff of the galaxy would end up a little less bloody if he were there. But it wasn't much use — the Doctor just answered that staying inside the Tardis and tinkering with his ship will be faster. He never said faster than what, and Jack already started to suspect it wasn't faster, only easier — but kept that observation to himself. The Doctor never chose to be there, after all, and Jack knew him well enough to know what he would choose to do, if he could.

But somewhere in the back of his mind, the Doctor's uselessness — or rather, refusal to be useful — was starting to get to Jack. Especially when unfortunate mishaps could have been avoided — it was only a miracle Owen survived an encounter with the Night Travellers, for example. After that whole incident, Jack was making a mental note to try and talk to him about antisocial behaviours and showing some gratitude. And perhaps being around for a bit when they needed him. But he never managed to work up the courage to do so.

"What's so funny?" Gwen asked.

"What? Oh nothing, just thinking out loud."

"What about?"

"Aren't you supposed to go home and have some fun with Rhys now?"

"Jack."

He sighed, then looked at her. Might as well talk — it was an innocent question and, in all honesty, maybe having _him_ around was a good reminder of what Jack should never become.

"I was just thinking how funny it is that he can still intimidate me into not beating some sense into him."

"Yeah," she nodded for a bit, "he does seem to have that gift, doesn't he."

"He's not always like that," Jack felt compelled to defend his friend.

"It's okay, Jack. I know he's been through a lot — I'm just thinking you've been, too. And anyway, I'm not going home now, Rhys is meeting us in the pub — you're coming?"

"Nah," Jack smiled. "Still got paperwork to catch up with."

"All work and no play makes Jack a — alright then," she gave him a kiss on the forehead. "Be good. We'll send Ianto early enough for you two to have some fun," she giggled and called for Tosh and Ianto, as Owen and Martha had already left work a couple of minutes ago and were now waiting for the rest of them up by the water tower.

"Night, Jack," called Tosh from the door.

"Good night," he replied.

Near the water tower, Owen whispered to Tosh, "Weren't we supposed to go on a date?"

Tosh looked at him miserably. "I kind of mentioned it to Martha and she got the wrong idea and then — "

X

In the Hub, Jack looked at the wooden box for a little bit longer, and then sighed and turned to his paperwork.

And Jack was going to give him all the time he needed, he really was, even if his patience was wearing a bit thin. He kept on throwing glances at the Tardis all evening long, in between paperwork, but never went up there and knocked on the wooden door.

At half past two it was obvious Gwen was wrong — they weren't going to bring Ianto back early. Might as well go to sleep, he thought and rearranged the paperwork in a neatly piled column on his desk. It was a random glance at the security screen, though, that showed him the delivery boy at the office door.

The third time _this week_. He was going to kill him.

"You ordered Chinese?" the kid — he was definitely a kid — said, bored, when Jack finally answered the door.

"A… friend did." A soon to be dead friend, but one nonetheless.

"That would be 13 pounds sixty," the kid said, looking bored.

"Thirteen — what's in this? Gold?"

"Don't know, don't care, that would be 13 pounds sixty please."

"Fine, fine," Jack dug into his pockets to get out his wallet and came up with a 20 pound note.

"Got any change?"

"No. good night," the cheeky kid took the note and disappeared.

It wasn't _knocking_ on the door of the Tardis as much as banging loudly.

"No need to shout, I heard you just fine — ooh!" the Doctor's face lightened up. "Chinese is here!"

"You know," Jack started as the Doctor snatched the bag from him and started rummaging through it, "at least you can actually pay — or answer the deliveries!"

"No money. 'Sides, I got some for you, here," he handed over a heat-saving package to Jack and started nibbling on his egg roll.

"I'm sure it can't be healthy for you to eat junk food all the time," Jack pointed out, "and especially at hours like 3 a.m."

"Nah, different physiology, my body knows how to deal with this just fine."

"Listen, Doctor, can I ask you something?" Jack sighed, accepting the inevitable — and deciding to at least have his noodles and sit down while he tried extracting information from the Doctor, always a hard, laborious job and most of the time unsuccessful.

The Doctor nodded in a mouth full of egg roll.

"It's just that — I've been thinking about it ever since that business with Copley. How come you let them capture you? Usually you're the first one to find a way out."

"They just caught me unprepared, that's all."

"You're always prepared. You're prepared in your sleep."

"Jack," the Doctor swallowed the rest of his egg roll in an attempt to make his answer as dignified as possible, "really. I was just not careful enough. These things happen. It's over, I'm out, it's alright. I'm alright, really, I'm fine, you know me," he gave the Captain his biggest smile and started working on the noodles.

Oh yes, Jack knew him perfectly well, which also meant he knew he was far from alright and that something really horrible must have happened for the Doctor to find himself in that mess, but that the chances of the arrogant Time Lord actually telling him anything of that were close to zero.

Better attack it from a different angle then.

"Why do you keep on working on the Tardis then? It's fine. They didn't touch it. But you keep on locking yourself inside as if staying there and fixing her is going to change anything."

"Your noodles are getting cold," the Doctor pointed out in what was no answer at all, and a rather clumsy way of avoiding the question.

"Doctor," Jack said, refusing to look at the noodles but instead staring at the Time Lord.

The Doctor just sighed. "I keep on hoping. You know, if I spend a long enough time with her it'll come back. They messed with my telepathic abilities, you heard him, now I can't hear her anymore — but I've never heard of anything like that. Maybe if I spend a long enough time with her, we'll be able to compensate — I mean, some of it is fine, you saw I was still able to connect with Janet. But with the Tardis…" he looked longingly at his spaceship and turned silent.

"And if that doesn't work?" Jack insisted.

But before the Doctor could answer, six people burst into the room. Rhys looked completely drunk — and Gwen must have been drunk to bring him in. Ianto looked anxious, Owen and Tosh breathless, and only Martha confused.

"What's going on?" Jack and the Doctor were both on their feet in a second.

"It's him," Tosh breathed.

"We saw him. In the pub," Owen continued.

"He looked at us, Jack, just looked at us and waved," Gwen added.

"What? Who? What are you talking about?"

"I'm afraid I'm to blame," the old voice was slow, and pleasant, and creepy at the same time. "I gave them quite a scare," Bilis Manger smiled, appearing behind them from out of thin air.


	3. The Nature Of My Game

Team Torchwood like to feel in charge. At least in their own hub, they enjoy the feeling that no surprises are going to happen, no unexpected villains would jump from beyond the door — or under the sink - and surprise them. Most of all, they don't like feeling vulnerable in their own base. The truth is, of course, they _are_ vulnerable, in more ways than even their long lived Captain can imagine — but they just don't like thinking about it too much. Or being given proof, such as a possible alien menace who's been given the chance to do more than his fair share of harm, showing up in the hub unexpected. Pubs are one thing — when seeing Bilis in the pub, the team immediately tried to contact Jack, and when they realised that wherever his radio was, it wasn't near his ear, they ran towards the Hub as fast as they could in order to alert him — and with the hope of advice. Even if, in all honesty, he didn't seem to know what to do himself the last time he's seen that particular creature.

But when Bilis showed up in their own base, well, that was something completely different. That was where they were safe, that was where they worked, that was where they hid a lot of valuable objects and alien artifacts and reports and generally didn't welcome aliens or strangers in — even if they had one in residence at that very moment. So, when the members of Torchwood realised their safe harbour had been infiltrated by the Alien Menace, they drew their guns — and so did Jack, even before Bilis finished speaking. The only people who remained weaponless were Rhys, who had no weapon and was far too drunk to use one effectively anyway; Martha, who was still confused but had been trained far too thoroughly by the Doctor on dealing with aliens to even consider reacting that way; and the Doctor himself, who's never let such an instinct be a part of him.

Instead, he pulled out his sonic screwdriver, and with exclamations of "But this is impossible! Completely impossible! How d'ya do that?" jumped past Jack and down the stairs towards their new guest, and started flashing the sonic device at him.

Owen could swear he saw Jack rolling his eyes. Doctor, he tried calling, but the alien wasn't having any of that. Torchwood protocol? Regular procedures? Seven other people in the room? Who cares, he wasn't a part of Torchwood anyway and this was way too fascinating to give up in the name of caution.

But that's what you come to expect of the Doctor — even those of Torchwood who haven't known him for very long could already see the pattern. No, the surprise came from Bilis. He didn't seem intimidated — should be, Jack thought, but isn't, maybe not the clever time travelling alien bastard they thought he was, just a time travelling alien bastard. But he wasn't dismissing the Doctor, either.

"You're something new — no, different," he corrected himself as he seemed to look at the Doctor in a fascination that reflected the Doctor's own. "A — Time Lord?"

The Doctor, still talking at 90 miles-per-hour, but not fooling Jack or Martha too much, as they've seen this routine just too often, did his best to act harmless and entertaining — and surprised when he asked Bilis how did he know.

"I am what… might have been," Bilis said in his chilling voice. "I am what humans inside spheres are to you — and the two of you," he turned his gaze at Jack and Martha. In response, Jack just aimed his gun again at Bilis. Because yes, the Doctor recovered from the surprise quickly, did his best to act as if nothing's wrong, everything's fine, this is just a funny answer — but Jack knew Bilis saw that moment of shock, hesitation — and memory?

Hell, the rest of Torchwood saw it too. Owen and Gwen look at each other for a moment when he made that comment about Martha and Jack — but were visibly startled at the Doctor's reaction all the same, and it was only after seeing the Doctor that Ianto raised his gun again and Tosh edged just a little bit closer.

Even Rhys realised something here was wrong, but lacking a gun, training, or sobriety, he just walked a bit closer towards Gwen.

Jack tried to use the moment in order to regain some sort of control. "Explain to me why we shouldn't shoot you right here, right now," he said.

Bilis just chuckled. "First thing, Captain, I don't think you could — " and was gone, only to appear again a second later closer to Jack and past the rest of the team.

"How did he do that?" Rhys demanded, showing himself to be slightly less drunk than was previously assumed, while Bilis did not listen but continued talking — "And secondly, I'm afraid our previous encounter has been slightly... misunderstood."

"You mean you weren't fooling us into opening the rift and letting a great big demon out that can kill people with its shadow and setting it on Cardiff?" Owen was sober enough to ask.

"I was only trying to return the balance to the universe," Bilis replied, not looking at Owen but still at Jack.

"How do you mean, balance of the universe?" the Doctor asked sharply. "How was it unbalanced? I mean, I'm not an expert, but I usually notice when something — "

"The balance of temptation, of course," Bilis, despite speaking in a maddeningly slow pace himself, seemed to have realised that if he does not stop the Doctor's speech flow soon, he would never be able to get in a word. "The great beast was Abaddon's father, set in chains and forced to swallow the Bitter Pill, and then spit it all over again. But it was alive. Alive and setting its influence through the entire universe. But then, one day, it disappeared — ah!" Bilis, who was staring straight at the Doctor's face now, seemed to recognise a difference in expression. "I see the story is familiar. And when the great beast was destroyed, the universe was thrown into chaos, a chaos that could only be cured by freeing Abaddon, the son."

"What sort of balance?"

"Of everything," came the reply.

"What are you?" the Doctor demanded.

"But this is not the reason I've come here," Bilis smiled. "I came here because of the creatures you call — weevils, I believe."

"Weevils," Owen repeated.

Weevils, Martha and Ianto mouthed at each other.

"Weevils?" Tosh and Gwen asked, stunned.

"Those aliens, right? Face like a mask?" Rhys was becoming more sober by the minute.

"What could you possibly want with weevils?" Jack was trying to look for a new trick.

"Gitafanks, actually," the Doctor was standing perfectly still, not letting his eyes off Bilis, but his voice sounded casual. "From Giifa Three — or is it four, it was a bit of a blur."

"Giifa Four, indeed," Bilis confirmed. "They are seasonal creatures, they —"

"Yes," Jack stopped him, "we know all about that. Since when do you care about weevils?" And I'm not sure I believe your story just there, sunshine.

"As I said, Captain, it's a question of balance. They were supposed to go back home by now, but they are still in the vicinity of the Rift, here on Earth. Terrible things might happen on Giifa Four — and in this fair city — unless they're returned home."

"But you said fifty years," Jack looked at the Doctor for a moment.

"That's what I got from Janet. But I suppose… her being locked like that…"

"And your telepathic abilities?"

The Doctor nodded, unhappy. "I might have got it a bit wrong… even I can make mistakes! Although, not that many."

"Your telepathic abilities?" Bilis turned towards the Doctor, looking fascinated.

"I'm fine, thanks," the Doctor replied.

"No, but I can feel it. Something different, indeed. I might just be able to help you there."

Jack thought it was a bad idea. A really bad idea. One of those "we shouldn't kill the Master, we should save him" bad ideas. Or, as he tried pointing out to the Doctor with the help of his team members - Martha and Rhys excluded, because, well, Martha wasn't exactly a part of his team and Rhys was definitely not a part of his team and Jack was going to do his best to keep it that way — one of those "let's open the rift because of something a dubious alien has been telling us that has no confirmation at all and shoot our leader in the process" bad ideas. The Doctor sniffed a bit and pointed out that was rather dumb on the whole. And that he would never have done it, of course. Especially the shooting Jack bit — no, Doctor, Jack pointed out, you'll just abandon me in the future. The Doctor quickly changed the subject, but made it very clear that just like he refused to accept the concept of not killing the Master as a bad idea, he was refusing to accept this one. He won't let Bilis into the Tardis, he would watch his every step, and really, Jack, he's a Time Lord, he's been around for quite a bit, he knows what he's doing thankyouverymuch. But Jack wasn't so sure.

The Doctor needed his ship. The Doctor needed his telepathic abilities. And the Doctor, despite all the wonderful things he does and how he never hesitates before risking himself in order to save others from their own mistakes, is not infallible.

And this was a bad idea.

But they worked a bit, the Doctor and Bilis, about the telepathic problem. Officially, they were also working about the Weevil problem — no one at Torchwood Three was going to rename them to an alien name, they liked 'weevil' way too much for that — but both aliens seemed more interested in the cocktail of drugs that was inhibiting the Doctor's telepathic abilities. The Doctor kept on trying to extract information from Bilis, of course, about who he was and what was he doing there, but he didn't seem to be able to achieve much success — it seemed that, for the first time in his long life, the Doctor found someone even less inclined to talk about his past and origins than himself.

Serves him right, really. But it still made Jack uncomfortable.

They had some moments of peace. Bilis wasn't always there, in the Hub, and frankly that was just fine with Jack because having this thing around him all day long and all night long was making Jack itchy and jumpy and tense and as a result he was shouting at his team all the time and they didn't deserve it one bit. Well… not all of it, anyway.

Now seemed to be on of these moments of peace as Bilis said something about trying to implement the solution to the weevil problem he and the Doctor had been working on, and the Doctor seemed keen on joining him doing — well, whatever it was.

"Don't go with him," Jack said.

"Look, Jack, I told you, we need to — "

"I don't trust him and I don't want you alone with him."

"Jack, I can take care of myself and — "

" — and besides, this is Martha's last night here, and Tom's here and everything, it'd be nice if you said goodbye — properly this time, Doctor — instead of running away like you always do, and don't think I haven't noticed the timing and how you pushed to do this tonight out of all possible times."

The Doctor was silent for a moment. What was he thinking about? Jack wasn't sure. There were hints, every once in a while — like when he mentioned Tom, out of the blue — that the timelines didn't exactly converge, and Jack knew the Doctor would have been strictly against staying here for that reason alone had he had any say on the matter. Timelines and all. You know. But the Doctor had no choice, so he just refused to talk, knowing all too well how important it is to preserve timelines.

But he did seem a bit miserable around Martha. Oh, he trusted her completely. Absolutely. With everything. And he adored her, and Jack couldn't help but feel it was better that way, because the alien showed so much more respect than he had to this wonderful woman before, when they were running for their lives because of the Master. No longer did he shut her out — no, he talked to her as an equal now, and as openly as he did with Jack — as openly as the Doctor ever did, really. And that was good, all good.

But something was coming, and the Doctor was doing his best to run away again, as always.

"Fine," he said now, and went to tell Bilis. The other alien — the creepy alien, the one Jack understood even less than the Doctor because, really, after a century of studying him and several times travelling with him Jack had the mistaken impression he was 'getting' the Doctor now — didn't seem all that pleased, and tried to argue, but the Doctor threw one glance at Jack and didn't give up.

So Bilis disappeared on his own — just as the group came in from the surface, bringing Rhys and Tom with them.

"So this is where you work?" Tom asked, stunned.

"Well, not exactly work, I still work for UNIT, you know — just the temporary assignment."

"Stay," Jack rushed over towards them. "I'll fire Owen, he's a bit useless anyway — and not half as good looking!"

"Thank you, Jack, that was touching," Owen said and Tosh giggled.

"Really, I have the retcon in my office drawer. And while we're at it we could retcon Tom here and then you'll be all mine!"

"Jack," she laughed, and Tom just coughed, embarrassed.

"Oh, he's like that with everyone, don't mind him. Tom, this is Jack, and these are Gwen, Rhys, Ianto, Tosh and Owen — and the Doctor."

"Hello," the Doctor waved, still further away from the group.

"Come on, pizza should be here any moment."

X

"So then the Reverend says, Really, you can't believe any of this, surely, Lady Eddizzzzzon!"

"The killer was the Reverend, who was the half alien son of the Lady from an affair she had with a _wasp_," Owen said, doubtful.

"Yup," the Doctor confirmed and ate another slice of pizza and the rest just laughed.

"I'm not buying this," Owen retorted.

"Well, there are many impossible things in the universe — and a lot of them happen here on Earth, I mean, you humans," the Doctor replied.

"Yeah, like what?" Owen said.

"For example, take human mating rituals — no wonder Lady Eddison chose a waspiform, at least they tell you what they want, when they want, quite clearly. None of these hints and tests and dates and everything! So much simpler and so much less frustrating, and you don't end up with your situation of not going to a a date for — how long has it been now?"

"For your information," Owen said, doing his best to preserve his dignity, "only last week."

"What?" Gwen and Martha both jumped. "When? With whom?"

"Well — it was supposed to be a date anyway, but you people messed it up!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Owen — " Tosh said and Martha's hand flew to her mouth.

"Oh my — "

Gwen stared horrified at Tosh, and then at Owen. "You're kidding…"

Jack started laughing.

The Doctor, at least, had enough decency to look uncomfortable.

"We thought it was worth a try — but then you lot showed up as well, thank you Martha — an then your mate Bilis decided to crash the party so we figured, lost cause."

"For now," Tosh added.

"Besides," Owen continued, obviously uncomfortable with both Gwen's reaction and the various giggles around the room, "you with your Time Lord superiority, when was the last time you went out on a date, or had sex, or anything!"

Jack watched the Doctor trying to squirm his way out of this one with perhaps more vindictive pleasure than the Doctor was due.

"Well that's different. I'm the last of my species, you know. Oh, I don't know," he gave up after looking at Jack's expression, "two hundred years? Three hundred? Can't have been more than five hundred, at any rate."

"Five hundred years and you're lecturing me?"

"Nah, he's just a coward, at least you had the guts to try to get on a date," Jack answered for the Doctor — who didn't seem to care too much for the answer.

"Excuse me!" he protested. "As I said, I'm the last of my species — "

" — Not the case two hundred years ago — "

"And _besides_, it's not like I had the opportunity — "

"Rose, Martha, Me," Jack wasn't taking his eyes off the Doctor. The Doctor, on the other hand, was doing his best to look at any other direction. "You're probably just rusty and wouldn't know what to do anyway," Jack smirked.

"Humans! Just because you have nothing else on your minds doesn't mean the rest of the universe is falling behind, you know! Time Lords have been around for quite a while before you got out of your trees, and let me tell you something, some of the old traditions of Gallifrey could teach even you some things, Captain."

"Why don't you then?" Jack said in what was clearly a challenge, and all of a sudden the entire room went quite — until Ianto coughed.

"I'm going to get everyone some more coffee," he said and got up quickly, walking towards the small kitchen.

"Jack," Gwen was no longer laughing but staring coldly at her boss, "I think he could use some help."

"Yeah," Jack said absent-mindedly and got up as well.

"Well, that went well," Rhys commented, and Tom whispered to Martha, "Are they always like that here?"

"I'm afraid so," Martha sighed.

"No wonder you're not fighting UNIT too much about going back," he sighed as well, and Martha smiled mischievously at him. "Oh, there are a couple more perks to being in London," she said and he just laughed.

The Doctor reached for another slice of pizza.

X

"It's not like that."

"Would you like tea or coffee, Sir?" Ianto ignored Jack's tone and fished out some more cups.

"Ianto. It's not like that."

"You left us for him once already."

"And I came back. For you. I could have kept travelling with him — he offered, Ianto, damn it! I chose to come back because I wanted to."

"Jack, I thought things were going to be different now," Ianto said, finally turning around to face his boss and his lover. "I thought, yes, you came back, this time you were making an effort, I don't feel like I'm just here because you don't want to be alone. But ever since _he_ came here, it's all been like — like before."

"I know, I know I've been neglecting you lately. I'm sorry. He's a friend, it's just that — "

"It's just that whenever Jack looks at me, he doesn't see what you think he sees," they both jumped as neither of them heard the approaching Time Lord. "When he sees me, he sees death, and destruction. And endless pain. Being dragged back to life over and over and over again into excruciating pain and when he was finally allowed to die it was only temporarily, only for the pain to come back again much much worse later. And then in the intervals — " the Doctor paused for a moment, deep in thoughts, deep in memories.

"The physical pain stopping only for him to see everything he cares about and everyone he loves turns to dust, suffering and dying, never ending, never stopping… It's not love and tenderness and adventure he sees when he looks at me, Ianto, don't worry. Do you have any tea?" the Doctor walked past the stunned couple, rummaged the kitchen for a clean cup and made a face when he could only found tea bags.

"Oh, well," he said, disappointed, "I guess that's better than nothing." He poured some of the hot water over the tea bag and walked out of the kitchen.

"Doctor," Jack called out after him but the Doctor kept on walking, and Jack gave Ianto an apologetic look and followed him.

"Right, so now I don't feel jealous, just really creeped out," Ianto said to no one in particular.

X

"Can you _be_ a little more melodramatic?" Jack was chasing the Doctor back to the main room.

"I just wanted some tea," the Doctor said.

"You know what I'm talking about. Look, Doctor, no one's saying that year was easy - on any of us, I don't remember you were having a laugh the whole time — but — "

"Jack, it's over, it's done, it doesn't matter anymore. I was doing you a favour, you seemed to be in a bit of trouble with Ianto over there and I was just trying to calm him down."

"By being melodramatic?"

"By telling the truth."

"That's not the truth. And if you think — "

"Jack," the Doctor's shut-the-hell-up tone, and if they weren't watched by seven other people, Jack would have made it clear to the Doctor he wasn't taking any of that rubbish from him anymore, but the presence of his team, their husbands and boyfriends and Bilis Manger, made him decide to postpone the argument for later.

Just postpone it, he promised himself, but wasn't quite sure it was a promise he was going to keep.

"You're back," he told Bilis.

"How very perceptive of you," Bilis said in a tone of voice that suggested no sarcasm whatsoever, which made Jack hate him just a little bit more. It was, after all, impossible for him to be more suspicious of him.

"We still have weevils in the city," Jack pointed out.

"Indeed. I was unable to complete my task because I finally came up with a solution to the — other problem," and he showed them a sealed glass tube.

"What is this?"

"A solution to bind several Earth drugs together and counter their effects on the Time Lord brain — specifically, the telepathic centre in the frontal section of the brain."

"It's a telepathy cure," Martha said, and the Doctor just rushed towards Bilis, took the substance from his hands and ran towards Owen's autopsy room.

"He's going to run some tests now," Owen told Tom.

"I kinda figured that," was the reply.

X

The Doctor did run his tests, and none of them came back false, or wrong, or toxic, as Jack kept on suggesting behind his back.

"I don't think you should take anything this guy gives you," he suggested, and wished — and not for the first time — the Doctor would have been one of his men and he could just order him not to take this stupid, risky step. "He's got you right where he wants you and — "

"Jack, I just analysed this thing three times over. The worst thing that could happen would be that it would have no effect. The best would actually get me out of here. It's safe. Really. It is. And I think you of all people should know it's time I was gone already."

"Doctor, we don't want to — "

"Jack, I'm doing this, nothing would happen."

So Owen served as the Doctor's doctor once again, pouring the transparent liquid into a syringe and making sure it's inserted into the exact spot in the Doctor's neck he was shown.

And then they waited. And waited. And nothing happened.

"Is it getting better?" Jack asked the Doctor anxiously.

"Give it some time, Captain, let the drug do its work," Bilis said.

So they waited some more.

The first sign something went wrong was the thud that alerted the others to the Doctor, dropping unconscious on the floor.

The Second was Bilis' disappearance.

X

They'll be burying Chris now. Another of Torchwood's employees would get a real ceremony in a real church and be put in a real grave, six feet under, because they had no more room in their morgue to freeze agents. Gwen Cooper, the head of the Torchwood Institute, looked blankly at the watch, counting the minutes until the body is lowered to its final rest, and wondered when was it she learned to move on from death so quickly. Maybe it was when they lost Jack — oh, he wasn't dead, not really. He could never die. But he wasn't alive, either. He was in one of those cryogenic cells in the morgue, awaiting a time — what? A time she would know how to resurrect a man whose consciousness was lost inside a dead man's head? A time she could find out how to kill a man who can never die? Until then — whenever then would be and whatever would bring it — he was frozen. Maybe it was Ianto's death… Maybe it was Dave or Jeanie or… she didn't know. Gwen buried herself back in the paperwork, hoping to forget all of their names and faces, just for a little bit.

But she couldn't block out the commotion in the Hub as her team was coming back from the funeral. Getting up, ready to shout at them to keep it quiet, just for a bit, just today, because she's trying to work, damn it, she looked up and saw -

"Bilis," she whispered at the old man, whose face never changed.

"We found him lurking outside of the Hub," Marty said, a bit breathlessly.

But Gwen hardly looked at Marty, just at Bilis, who smiled at her in that warm and creepy way of his, that same smile she could never forget.

"My dear," he said, "did the Doctor's death have the results you were hoping for?"


	4. You Cannot Kill Time

"It's bigger on the inside!" Tosh couldn't help herself. And it was. The blue box, so small on the inside that she wondered what sort of a spaceship it was, how can anyone possibly fly in time and space in it — and made of wood, of all things — turned out to be a real alien spaceship — a huge alien spaceship on the inside. Shining in a golden and green light, the main room seemed to have some sort of a console. How come _they_ never get any cool spaceships, she wondered for a second — after all, plenty of aliens came to Cardiff. But no, all the spaceships, UFOs and cool transportation methods ended up in London. All they had was the rift.

She could have stood there, gaping in amazement, forever — but Jack was already running inside, and she remembered her original plan and rushed in after him.

"Jack!" she called, but he didn't stop, just walked along corridors, twisting this way and that, and Tosh hoped as hell he knows where he's going in here, because she was disoriented after the third turn.

"Jack!" she tried again, and this time he stopped, stopped and faced her. "What are you trying to do here?"

"Bilis must have lied to us. The Doctor was fine, he was getting better, you saw him — and all of a sudden he crashes like that? I'm not buying it."

"Well it does seem suspicious, but what could we possibly do about it?" she asked.

"I'm hoping there's something about Time Lord physiology in here," he said and took her hand. "Come on, Tosh, we're going to the library."

It was definitely a library. An alien library, more like it, as Tosh couldn't read any of the books — no, that's not true. Every once in a while she recognised something. Shakespeare's complete works, facsimile edition. The Catcher in the Rye, some 14 different copies. A whole stand dedicated to Isaac Asimov's writings. Gon gitsune and other Japanese stories for children, she smiled at reading the Kanji. And more and more in languages she couldn't read or have never seen before — and most of them were written in that same weird, drawing-like writing the Doctor used all the time, writing little notes to himself as he worked on things.

"Can you read this stuff?" she asked Jack as he pulled one of the alien books.

"The Tardis is translating for me," he said absent-mindedly.

"Oh," Tosh said, disappointed. A shame this translation didn't work for Tosh, too. She would have loved to spend hours in this place, reading and —

"There!" Jack's call had snapped her out of her musings. "Time Lord physiology. Come on!" and he darted out of the room again, Tosh following him, too afraid she'd get lost and never see the light of day if she didn't.

X

Jack's plan turned out to be quite, quite simple. The book said a Time Lord never completely lose consciousness. That is, the Doctor might be lying there, unmoving and non-responding, but somehow, somewhere inside his brain there should still be activity. And they would need to take advantage of it fast, because one of his hearts had already failed and the other was beating slowly, and getting slower by the minute. He needs to regenerate, Jack had concluded, give the order to his body to do that exact same thing that got him trapped inside a container for so long with tubes sucking out his blood and inserting drugs into his system in the first place — let himself rejuvenate, become a new man, and flush all those nasty things away.

Only he has to know he has to do it, Jack reasoned out.

So Jack would use the knowledge inside the book, connect his own consciousness to the Doctor's with electrodes — with thanks, of course, to several alien gizmos he's had Tosh dig out from their boxes, use the exact right drugs and the right electrical shock at the right moment, and find himself inside the Doctor's head, able to talk to the Time Lord and explain the situation.

A very simple, straight forward plan. Considering you're an insane, suicidal idiot, was the point the rest of his team were trying to make as he hooked the Doctor to the electrodes.

"Jack! For the last time, there's no guarantee he can do that when he's not fully conscious."

"It's worth a try, Owen."

"How are we supposed to get you back? Huh? What if you're stuck in there, forever?"

"Never going to happen," Jack smiled.

"Jack, listen to me," Gwen tried invoking reason in him. "It's too dangerous. We can't take that risk."

"The Doctor needs me," he answered.

"We need you, too," Ianto said quietly.

Jack stopped his preparations of plugging himself into the machine, and walked towards Ianto. "I'm coming back," he said quietly. "Don't worry."

Two things were obvious once they broke their kiss and Jack went back into injecting himself with the substance made out of something he was reluctant to confess to Owen about: Jack's team members were still unconvinced, and that fact was not going to stop Jack himself from going through with it.

"Wish me luck," he finally said, lying next to his alien friend, ready to press the button.

X

"What are you talking about?" Gwen demanded.

"But my dear, you seem quite upset," Bilis answered.

"What the fuck are you talking about? I never asked… I never wanted… You did this! All of this!" Gwen shouted at him, her gun in her hand, aimed at Bilis.

"But of course, you wouldn't remember. In a way, it has never happened."

"What didn't?"

"Your request," he smiled at her.

"I never asked for him to die. I never asked for any of this," Gwen suddenly sat down, tired, and afraid, and so, so alone. "When he died… that's when everything went wrong," she said quietly.

"I could not have predicted this," Bilis said.

"What do you mean, what results did I want? What happened?"

"Tell me, my dear," he asked her, "are you familiar with the concept of alternate realities?"

X

The Doctor never actually accepted Jack's offer to be an official part of the team. Jack told her he never thought he'd take it, but decided it was worth a shot anyway. He's not going to admit he's stuck here, Gwen, Jack said.

Martha also had a suggestion, to go back to work for UNIT in the meantime. Just until he gets everything straight, until he figures out what went wrong and how to fix it. The Doctor flatly refused. Oh, it's not that he prefers Torchwood over UNIT, of course not. But he's been sucked into working with UNIT once and ended up staying a lot longer than he intended to. Something in his eyes when he told Martha that made Gwen ask Jack later what exactly did he mean, and it was Jack who told her the Doctor, who stayed for several years on Earth, could have left sooner than he initially did. It's just for his assistant he ended up staying.

He makes connections with humans, even if he acts as if he doesn't care or doesn't want anything to do with us sometimes. And I'm getting the feeling he knows that if he starts working with Martha, he'll stay.

The Doctor made sure they know he's not on the team. But he did start going off to missions with them more and more. The day Gwen woke up late and found the rest of the team had survived another attempt on their lives by Captain John, he was there with them — and he soon took control. He made sure they all knew where to go as he went back with Jack to the Hub, to capture the rogue Time Agent and stop whatever his destructive plan was this time. What even Jack and the Doctor didn't know was that Captain John was not working on his own plan and out of his own accord. When the Doctor stopped John from transporting Jack back to the past, back to his brother, all hell broke loose. Jack died once, when the bomb on John's wrist went off after he did not follow the orders he was given. The Doctor didn't even have time to feel guilty about causing Jack's death once again, because all of a sudden Jack's psychopath of a brother showed up and almost killed the both of them.

Gwen didn't know what Jack took harder — that two of his team had died in the line of duty, following the orders the Doctor gave them, or that the Doctor, in the heat of the moment and despite his best efforts, ended up killing Jack's brother, the only thing he had left of his family and his past.

She did know what she took harder though. And she couldn't forgive the Doctor for Owen and Tosh. It should have been someone else. She knew they knew what they were doing when they joined Torchwood, they knew what they signed up for. They were all in danger. But there had to be something. Something else. Some way out of this that didn't end with Tosh bleeding to death and Owen being vaporised into ashes.

But she didn't say anything. She knew Jack was in enough pain without her pointing out at the alien he adored, who also happened to be the killer of his brother, as the source of his trouble. It was an agreement in silence between her and Ianto.

She felt guilty about it. Not so guilty when she remembered Owen and Tosh and missed them like hell. Not so guilty when they were locked inside the base and Jack was sent outside to help a past version of the Doctor while the Doctor of their own timeline just sat there and let the people of Cardiff die by Daleks. Not so guilty when the tension between Jack and Ianto became more and more unbearable. They were still trying to hold onto some sort of a relationship, but it was obvious it was a pretense that didn't have a chance of holding for much longer. Jack had the tendency of looking at the Doctor in the same way the Doctor looked at his Tardis. It was longing, longing and misery, and the only person in the room who didn't seem to notice it was the Doctor himself.

But the tension didn't last too long. It was one of these days the Doctor decided he wasn't a part of Torchwood and stayed behind, and only the four of them went after the alien terrorist cell — Jack, Gwen, Ianto and Jeannie. Jack told the Doctor that they needed his help, maybe if he was there this would not end as that same bloodbath they both knew it was bound to be. The Doctor still refused. He thought he found something that might help him, even after a couple of years he still had that dream of going away one day, into the stars and all the way up.

And besides, that snide remark he threw about the alien terrorist cell and Torchwood made it clear he was sure it was going to be a bloodbath either way, and didn't care much to be a part of it. Yeah, he had a point, Gwen had to admit. He just didn't have to be so self righteous about it.

It turned out it was a bloodbath. Just not the one they were expecting. The Doctor's smile and whatever it was that made him happily bounce at them as they came back turned to shock and regret when he saw Ianto's body in Jack's hands. He just didn't make it. And for just those several minutes, stricken with grief, Gwen had the vindictive pleasure of seeing him ridden with guilt over Ianto's lifeless body. Yes, that's right, you son of a bitch. You could have stopped that, had you come with us. Now he's dead, and it's all your fault.

She didn't want to go to work the next morning. She hugged Rhys all night long, and didn't know how to face Jack's pain, Ianto's empty working space, Jeannie's tears, and that blue box.

When she finally dragged herself outside of bed and into the hub, she was struck with shock. There was no blue box there. Yes, the Doctor had something exciting to tell them before he realised the horror of their news. He figured out what it was, he managed to undo it. He was free of them, and they of him. But now the Hub was empty, the box was gone — and Jack was nowhere to be seen. It took Jeannie three hours to find the note. The explanation. How Jack couldn't take it anymore, needed a bit of a way out.

So they were stuck there, on Earth, right now, just the two of them. Team Torchwood, preparing the human race against the future, because everything was changing.

Jeannie died next. They weren't just the two of them anymore, they had others. But Jeannie died next. And at some point Gwen just stopped going back home. So then, when she saw Bilis years afterwards, when she knew how everything went wrong — and why — she couldn't help but take the way out she was offered. The way to make sure none of this happens. None of the Doctor's destructive influence — and yes, she's read in the meantime the files about him, the trail of dead bodies and broken hearts he left behind — she took it. It took her a while to agree to Bilis' proposal. It took her ages to make up her mind, decide to end the life of such a being in such a way. But then Chris died, and she knew this would be the only way to stop it. To bring Jack back.

"But he didn't, he just left us sooner," she told Bilis. "He might as well be dead. The same day the Doctor died, we lost the both of them. Things are so much worse than what you're telling me now, not better."

"I cannot account for all the variables," Biis said quietly, calmly, apparently unimpressed.

"He's — can we do it again?" she suddenly asked him.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Not kill the Doctor. Owen and Tosh, the way they died, what you're describing sounds fast and easy compared to how they died after the… But there has to be a way. Isn't there a way? A way it doesn't end like this, a way they all live and - ?"

"I don't know," said Bilis, and if he ever seemed honest to her, this was the time. "It's hard to account for everything. There might be a solution — but it might make things worse."

"Worse. It can't be worse than this. What's your solution?"

"The drug I gave the Doctor. There is a way to counter it."

"So we're back to square one," she said. "What you told me. The Doctor stays on Earth, Tosh and Owen die, and then Ianto, and then — "

"No," said Bilis. "He won't stay on Earth. Curiously, that same drug can counter other things, too, so that — "

"So that he gets his telepathic abilities again," Gwen stared at him, eyes open wide. "He leaves Torchwood. When Captain John comes — "

"It won't be the same," Bilis said.

"They have a chance. We all have a chance."

"Yes."

It didn't take her long to decide. "Do it," she told that alien, the one she never trusted but was now her only hope. "Do it, save him, let him live and then leave us and then everything would be back the way it should be."

Bilis just smiled at her. "As you wish," he said and disappeared.

It never occurred to Gwen that, just like in Bilis' story, this was the day they buried Chris.

X

"Good luck," the team gave up and said in the end, and Owen administrated both Jack and the Doctor the electrical shock. For just a second, Jack screamed — and then turned quiet.


	5. To Sleep, Perchance To Dream

Yellow.

Jack blinked, then closed his eyes, opening them again slowly after several seconds.

Still yellow. Bright yellow. He blinked some more, trying to get used to the brightness. After a short while, he could see the origin of the light — right in front of him, straight ahead, the red grass turned into something bright and shiny and — well, yellow. Getting closer, he could see what he thought to be a big yellow mass was, in fact, made of a lot of little shapes, almost like —

- oh, you're kidding me, he thought. Come on. The Doctor's subconscious _cannot_ be full of sunflowers.

They weren't really sunflowers, he realised as he got closer still. Perhaps… alien sunflowers. By the colour of the grass, he suspected they were a very specific subspecies of the Helianthus Annuus Vulgaris — the Gallifreyan sort.

Well, there was only one man alive these days who knew the answer — and he was probably the man whose figure was squashing some of these flowers, lying in the middle of the field — well, metaphorically speaking, at least.

"You know, out of all the instruments I've pictured you playing, the recorder was never something I considered seriously."

The music stopped as the Doctor got up from the flowers to look at Jack. "Why not?" he asked. "It's a fine instrument. Beautiful in its simplicity, really. No buttons, you don't have to stretch your fingers too much, you can play some nice tunes with only one hand, your knuckles don't get tired and — "

"Yeah, the point was, it's not exactly _you_."

"Huh," the Doctor shrugged and went back to playing the thing.

"Doctor, would you stop for a minute?"

"Used to be me."

"What?"

"Used to be me. Playing the recorder. Did that a lot. Years ago, of course, when I was on my second regeneration and — "

"You need to regenerate."

The Doctor just looked at Jack, confused. "Why?"

"You know none of this is actually happening, right? We're not _really_ in a field of sunflowers, you're not really playing the recorder, the sun isn't really red — "

"Daisies."

Jack blinked for a moment. "What are you talking about?"

"These aren't sunflowers. They look like sunflowers — well, like Earth sunflowers, but they're actually a lot more like daisies in their biological makeup — which is quite fascinating in itself, you see, because — "

"Doctor!"

"Sorry."

"You're lying in the autopsy room, we don't know how to make you better. You need to regenerate."

"I told you before, Jack, why would I want to regenerate? I like the way I am now, look at me."

"If you don't regenerate, you're going to die."

The Doctor didn't seem to be impressed by that statement. Instead, he just got up and started walking towards — well, nothing in particular. Nothing Jack could see, at least, but then again, all he could see was the bright yellow reflection of the flowers — whatever they were — in his eyes, and the Doctor's back, covered by that unmistakable brown suit of his.

But even if he wouldn't have been able to see him, he'd have been able to _hear_ him. Give him that, if there was one thing the Doctor could do, it was talk. And talk, and talk, and talk. And confuse Jack.

"What did you mean?"

"Sorry?" the Doctor, distracted, stopped his lecture about the traits of the UV radiation from Gallifrey's suns and their influence on the common Gallifreyan flora, his hand stopping a second before he opened the door of a shed in the middle of the field — a shed that Jack could have sworn wasn't there a minute ago.

"What you said earlier. You already told me about regeneration?"

"Oh, right, timelines. I will tell you," and the Doctor opened the door to the shed and went inside, Jack following him, the same as he did in the past several minutes. The Doctor was very good at denying what he didn't want to hear and confuse his opponent by giving lectures and —

"Son of a bitch," Jack muttered, seeing the Game Station all around him.

X

"This is a bad idea."

"You've said so already," Tosh commented half heartedly and went back to following the two life signs on the monitor.

"I know I did," Owen replied. "It was a bad idea then and it's a bad idea now."

"Well, we went along with it, there's no point saying it now."

"I know."

"You should have said it _before_ Jack decided to — "

"I did."

"I'm just saying, there's no point in going on about it now."

"I know."

Tom, tired of listening to the two of them bickering, sighed and went back towards Rhys, who was staring at the ceiling, pointedly ignoring everything in the room except for his beer.

"Are they always like this?" he had to ask.

Rhys looked over at Owen and Tosh arguing, and then shot a glance at Martha, Gwen and Ianto, who were moving around a lot in a way that looked to both men as pretense of doing something as opposed to sitting down and biting their nails — but seemed to have about the same amount of usefulness.

"Pretty much, yes," Rhys admitted and took another sip of his beer.

"How do you manage these people on a regular basis?"

"I usually do my best to pretend they don't exist. Tonight was a special occasion," Rhys took another sip, and then sat up a bit to look at Tom. "To remind me why I do that in the first place."

"Ah."

"You'll get used to it. Special ops girlfriend. Your life isn't going to be boring, mate."

Tom just laughed. "Like it was before."

X

In all fairness, Jack should have known this was coming. He knew the Doctor well enough to know that long speeches are usually there to disarm the opponent, that that superior alien mind of his was always predicting everyone's next move, and that the bumbling buffoon never actually existed.

He just never expected to be on the receiving end of this strategy. This was what happened to other people. This was what happened to the Doctor's enemies.

When did this happen — but wait, the Doctor's already out of sight. If this was some strategy to get Jack confused and unbalanced, it succeeded, but Jack still wasn't going to let the Doctor get away with it.

"Doctor!" he shouted and jogged a bit forward, doing his best to avoid the dust on the floor. He knew that dust all too well, even though a century has already passed, he still remembered that. Another time the Doctor's thrown his words around, made it appear like it all was going to turn out okay, and then just disappeared.

He could see him now - _him!_

"Doctor!"

The man in the leather jacket turned around, and Jack was only slightly disappointed to see it was still the Doctor he's come to know in the past year and a half, not the one he's last seen a century and a half before. Even if he was wearing his clothes.

"This jacket's a bit too big on you," he commented, catching his breath back. The Doctor, meanwhile, looked unhappily down at his shirt.

"Yes, it is, isn't it?" he sighed a bit. "A shame. I loved this jacket."

"Doctor? Why are we here?" Jack asked carefully. If I'm the enemy, he thought darkly, I'd rather he just come out and say it.

"What are you asking me for?" the Doctor shrugged, looking genuinely surprised. "It's not me who brought us here."

"It's your mind!"

"I'm unconscious on Owen's autopsy bed — and I hope there are enough people there to make sure he resists any urge to vivisect the alien, I'll tell you that!"

"Don't worry, he's not going to — hold on, then why are we here?"

He remembered these corridors. All too well. He'd have thought, a century and a half later, he'd have forgotten how they looked like. Those combinations of black and brown and silver. Those lifts and doors that hid horrible games behind them, a trick to give the Daleks more material to build their fleet from. That smell of cleaning solution and emptiness and machines. And that quietness, the same surreal silence that was his only companion in those hours before he tried using his wrist device. Why does he remember them so well? Maybe because, for what seemed like forever, this was the time everything went wrong. Yeah, they fought Daleks here, they thought they lost Rose, they thought they were going to destroy the Earth, and all the humans on it, and that they were all going to die. But it was the last time in such a long while he was truly happy.

"Exactly, Jack," the Doctor said quietly now, not going on and on like he did only minutes ago. "We're here because your mind insisted on bringing us here," he said and sniffled loudly. "I'd say you have some issues."

"I have some issues? You're — " the Doctor paused for a second, seemed to reconsider the corridor they were about to go into, and changed direction. Jack, confused, tried to follow. "You're the one who's refusing to answer a simple question!"

"I was regenerating."

"Huh?" Blowing off steam, Jack never expected his rant would actually deliver him a response.

"When I told you I'd rather stay in this body. It was a little trick I did, a Dalek hit me and I had to regenerate but I transferred the energy to the hand — thanks for that, by the way — so I could stay the same. Didn't complete the regeneration process. Funny that, now I don't know if it counts as a regeneration or not, I might have one lifetime less than I thought I did," he seemed to consider this for a moment, realised he doesn't like where they were going to once again, and changed direction abruptly into another corridor, identical in every way to the one he retreated from.

"A Dalek hit you? And I was there?"

"Yeah, you and Donna and Rose and — "

"Whoa. Hold on. Rose? I thought she — "

"Yeah, she found her way back, listen, you know you shouldn't tell me any of this when the time comes and you see us, right?"

"Right… You don't like this corridor either?"

"Yeah, I'm not crazy about where it's leading to. So anyway, you've got your answer now?"

"No, I've got more questions — will you stop that!" Jack could have sworn he was getting dizzy from all the turns — the turns the Doctor seemed to be doing now every five second.

"If you stopped leading us here, I'd stop turning around. What question?"

"Why isn't Rose with you now?"

The Doctor stopped dead. "That's… complicated, Jack."

"What did you do?"

"I gave her what she needed. She's happy now."

"You've been with us for over a month in Torchwood, and you've never said a word. About Rose. About giving her up again. Hell, Doctor, do you ever consider _not_ running away? I don't care, I'm going straight in there, wherever it is!" he said, deciding to stop giving the Doctor the leeway that got them into this mess in the first place — well, parts of it, anyway, Jack insisted on believing because he needed to blame the Doctor for something one way or the other — and stepped into the corridor.

Which wasn't a corridor at all. "Oh," he said eventually.

"See? Sometimes refusing to continue in the same direction makes sense," the Doctor said in a voice that did its best to sound smug and not shake from those nightmarish memories they both shared of this place. Pretending as usual, the Doctor stepped into the Valiant's deck and sat near the table, where a game of Gallifreyan chess was already set.

X

"They stopped running around, at least," Tom observed as he took another slice of pizza — and then noticed its temperature and thought better of it.

He wasn't wrong about the rest, though — they did stop running around. Tosh was still staring at the monitors, while Owen was doing his best sitting around and making sure his patients weren't getting any worse — and whenever they were, the both of them just looked worried at each other as there really wasn't anything to do. Ianto just hovered somewhere near by, obviously afraid and very, very quiet. Rhys and Gwen were sitting in the corner, hugging each other, with nothing to say or do, but still refusing to go home. And Tom, tired and miserable — but not the first to leave and definitely not the one to leave Martha alone — tried to keep his girlfriend's mind on other matters.

She smiled weakly at him, and just cuddled closer. "You should go to sleep. It's 3 in the morning."

"Are you going to go to sleep?"

"No."

"Then neither am I. I'm gonna stay with you here."

"Thanks," she smiled and kissed him, and he kissed her back and decided that no matter what crazy secret-ops things he's going to have to live with, it's going to be worth it.

Well, secret ops things and aliens. "Um, Martha?"

"Yeah?"

"Isn't he the one who started this mess?" he sat up and pointed at the alien who showed up out of nowhere, in exactly the same way as before.

It has to be said, considering Martha almost never touched a gun and Gwen was only using hers for a year or so, they both reacted extremely fast by pulling their respective weapons from wherever they were kept and pointing them at Bilis.

"I see we have another unfortunate misunderstanding," said Bilis calmly.

"What did you give him?" Martha demanded, as Owen and Ianto rushed over from the autopsy space towards the group. "What the hell did you give him?" Owen now shouted as well.

"It was a simple mistake. The drug should have worked."

"What was it made of?"

"A solution of calcium carbonate, sodium chloride, ammonia, carbon dioxide and water. About 10cc."

Tom, who was now standing upright next to Martha, couldn't help but comment.

"You gave him…"

X

"… baking soda. That's what it was. I admit, as far as I know it doesn't have any of the traits Bilis claimed it has, but it also is quite harmless. It didn't cause whatever it was that did this. Now, are you going to play or not?"

"I don't know the rules," Jack looked reluctantly at the board of Gallifreyan four-dimensional chess.

"Come on, you've seen us play it a hundred times or so."

"Yeah, well," Jack sat, resigned, in the chair in front of the Doctor and started drawing the table that accompanied the game, "I had my head occupied in other things. Like the destruction of the Earth and how to beat the Master. And sometimes it was plans of what I was going to do to him once we took over — " he ignored the Doctor's pained grimace as he said that. The Doctor was free to mourn the psychopathic bastard, but Jack had no intention of even pretending he felt anything but joy at his death, not anymore. "And sometimes I was just worried about Martha, and my team, and — is this supposed to be blue?"

"Red. I know. But it's not that complicated a game. I was playing it and I was occupied by the same things."

"Could have fooled me. I start at three," he said and moved one of the pieces.

"Seventeen. How d'ya mean, could have fooled you?"

"Well, you always won. Nine — this goes three steps down now if I call nine, right? Then nine. If you were so occupied with trying to save the world, I would have expected you to lose a game or two. Which you never did. Your turn, by the way."

The Doctor looked slightly uncomfortable as he tried to choose his next piece. "Ah!" he finally found it. "Four. Well, I was trying to tune myself into the Archangel network, which took a while, not to mention all the games the Master liked to play that you didn't even see. I'm just that good at this game, Jack," he smiled a charming smile at his opponent. "And to be honest, I didn't have a chance of playing it ever since the Time War, so it did have some good parts. In case you're not following, it's your move now," he said in a fake helpful voice.

"Yes, I know, I'm just trying to figure out — oh! Thirteen! But this is exactly what I mean."

"The Master really wasn't that good in this game, Jack, he never was. Takes too much planning ahead, the Master always busied himself with half the picture. Seventy Three, we're switching to blue. And what do you mean, exactly?" the Doctor demanded over Jack's protests that this can't possibly be according to the rules.

"I mean this. All of this. Just like earlier with Ianto. Erm, three. You go through this, all of this, and I've heard some stuff from Tish, Doctor, I know I wasn't there for the worst stuff — "

" — Nine, again."

" — and then you — alright, alright, four! — fly away in the Tardis into the past or the future alone — "

" — you were the one who didn't want to come, twenty five, I offered this time — "

"- Yeah, I didn't come 'cause I knew how it's going to be, you offered out of guilt, not because you really wanted me to be there — what?"

"Your move. And I did want you to be there."

"No. You didn't want to be alone, Doctor. Not the same thing. You'd have treated me the same way you treated Martha all that time she travelled with you if I said yes. And then you go and get yourself shot by a Dalek, of all things — "

"That was after! And would you play your turn already!"

"Fine, one, and we're switching to green now, and I know that was after, that's the whole point!"

"I don't get the point and you misread the rules, we're back with red now, not green."

Jack refused to play anymore, having stopped following the game and deciding to stop enhancing the Doctor's tendency of running. "The point is I had Ianto, and Martha, and Gwen, and the rest of my team, and Martha's family, at least in the few months afterwards. You suffered more than the rest of us, because we at least had the benefit of seeing the destruction of our planet undone and have the satisfaction of seeing that bastard die. What did you have?"

"I had Donna. Let's not play this game, it's too complicated for your human brain anyway," the Doctor said in typical Time Lord arrogance and got up, walking towards the door that would lead them further inside the Valiant.

Jack, of course, followed.

X

"I can't believe you're buying it. He's lying to us, again."

Owen was doing his best to be heard — that is, shouting at full volume at everyone else in the room.

"Owen, calm down."

"No, I won't. You wanna know why? Because he's lying to us. Just like last time. Oh, he knows how to make it sound credible, and very tempting, and make us want to listen to him, but he's lying to us, and if we listen to him then we — "

"Then we what?" Gwen picked up exactly where Owen faltered. "The Doctor is dying, who knows how we'll get Jack out, how much worse can things get?"

"I don't know! That's what I'm saying!"

"I simply wish to undo the mistake I made earlier by ignoring the Doctor's condition."

"I thought you just gave him baking soda! What condition would that be exactly?"

"The Doctor was under previous medications, was he not?"

"From over a month ago!"

"And yet. I could not foresee the interaction between the different substances, my dear."

"So the baking soda interacted with something Copley gave him and that's what made him crash?"

"Precisely."

"Bullshit," was Owen's only response.

"We only need to counteract this with a simple drug that is commonly found in your area, and he would be fine — fine and healthy, the both of them."

"So you want us to add another drug?" Martha voiced her scepticism in a more calm manner than Owen, at least.

"A very simple one. 300 mg of Acetylsalicylic acid, that is all."

"See?" Owen said exasperated. "He's just playing with us."

"What's acetyl — whatever it was?" Gwen asked.

"Aspirin. He wants to give the Doctor some aspirin. Even though this amount could kill him. It's on the medical records."

X

It wasn't the Valiant. It was the inside of a small flat. It smelt like — it smelt like Christmas, actually. Like Turkey and eggnog and some pasta with an incredible sauce and chocolate. And it looked like Christmas, too. Decorations and lights and presents.

Hell, even the wrecked door was broken in the distinct shape of a Christmas tree.

"This is definitely _not_ my subconscious," Jack said out loud, just to make it clear, in case there was any doubt on the matter. His Christmases looked — well, not like that, at any rate.

"Shhh. You'll wake them up."

The Doctor was sprawled on the floor, wearing pyjamas, playing with the remote. On the sofa behind him Rose was lying down, covered in a blanket, deeply asleep. Jack couldn't help but touch her cheek, ever so lightly, before looking around and spotting the older version of Rose settled — in a very similar way, he had to admit — on an armchair. He would have recognised Jackie Tyler even without the footage of hers he saw from the battle of Canary Wharf — her daughter looked so much like her. But the video confirmed it, anyway.

"When was this?" he settled next to the Doctor.

"Christmas — same Christmas I lost my hand, actually."

"You just stayed here all night?" Jack did his best not to sound surprised — but failed rather miserably.

"Yeah, can you believe it? All night, sitting here, watching television of all things. They started a marathon of all six episodes of Peripheral Vision Man at about… oh, four a.m., I think, it was quite an education on how bad Earth entertainment could be. I don't usually stop and watch television," he added.

"No kidding," Jack smiled.

They sat there in silence for a little bit longer, listening to the two women sleeping. The television, thankfully, was closed.

"Who's Donna?"

"She didn't want to go with me at first, either," the Doctor didn't exactly answer the question — but it was better than nothing. "She died. During that year. I don't know when, I just — he took me once down there, you know? There were bodies in the street. In London. No one bothered burying the dead anymore, they were just left there. She was just another woman. Died because she mouthed off to one of his guards, or one of the spheres, or… I dunno. Just because. No one had the energy to bury the dead anymore, so she was just left there."

Jack wasn't quite sure whether that sound was a snort or a choked sob, but he didn't ask, either. Instead, he just followed the Doctor, who got up and went to the next room, where —

The Doctor, now wearing jeans, a red jacket and Lennon-esque glasses, sat near a piano.

"Death defying, mutilated armies scatter the Earth, crawling out of dirty holes, their morals, their morals disappear — On a sailing ship to nowhere, leaving any place, Caesar's palace, morning glory, silly human, silly human race," the cheerful music the Doctor was playing didn't exactly go well with the words he was singing, Jack thought.

"The Tylers didn't have a piano," Jack remarked. "I'm pretty sure Rose would have mentioned something. Besides, aren't you afraid of waking them up?"

"It's a dream, Jack. They're not really here. They wouldn't wake up if we made noise. They're locked away in a parallel universe, living their life, something domestic like Rose always wanted, something I could never give her. Relax."

"Doctor, why do you want to die?"

X

"You have to make a decision," Bilis said in his calm, slow voice, that irritated Owen so, so badly, even if he wouldn't have felt all the more stupid for killing Jack once because of this man and his poisonous promises. "You can either continue to doubt me, in which case the Doctor would surely die, taking the good captain with him. Or you can decide to trust me, after all, and give me a chance to save the both of them.

Your choice."

X

"I don't want to die," the Doctor said thoughtfully.

Jack was no longer sure where the both of them were. Or which one of them was responsible for the transition this time. It looked like a castle, a crumbling castle, right there on the beach — he could smell the ocean. He was sure he's never been there, even though it smelled like home, like the Boe-Shane Peninsula. That was another smell he would never forget.

"Then regenerate," he ignored the castle for a moment in order to face the Doctor, who looked completely out of place, wearing an orange astronaut suit.

"You know, you gotta ask yourself just how deluded the people who built this place were. They thought they were shaping their destiny, shaping the whole galaxy — they never even noticed the Time Lords watching their every step, making sure they don't become too advanced or too much of a threat. I had an argument with Romana once, why we watched them but not the Daleks. She thought it was because we just didn't notice the Daleks, because they weren't a threat up until that very moment they became one. I think it's because the Daleks don't _look_ like a threat. But they — they looked like us, so of course we paid attention when they built repositories of all of their knowledge and tried to understand existence and time and the universe. We just didn't give the Daleks enough credit until it was too late."

"Regenerate."

"It wouldn't fix anything."

"You wouldn't die."

"And then what? I thought about it, Jack, I thought about it a lot. The damage Copley did isn't going to be undone by regenerating. I'd still be stuck on Earth."

"You were stuck on Earth before!" Jack finally lost his patience with whatever game the Doctor was playing and resorted to simple, plain shouts. "It wasn't so bad. It got better. You worked with UNIT for years. You even stayed after you fixed the Tardis and found a way out."

"I stayed for Jo," the Doctor commented quietly.

"Yeah. She was worth staying for, wasn't she?"

"They all were. You — all were. But you always leave, in the end. Staying on Earth didn't matter, she was gone after a while, and I stayed on Earth. Donna doesn't even remember me."

"I do. And Doctor, if you don't regenerate — "

"Don't worry," the Doctor smiled all of a sudden, jumping towards Jack. "That won't be necessary!"

"What are you talking about?"

"Your clever team found a way round. Time to wake up," he said and put his arm on Jack's shoulder, and as Jack looked up at him, the orange sleeves of the astronaut suit slowly turned into the familiar brown stripes.

"Aaaaah!" he breathed as he sat up on the makeshift bed, the Doctor's smiling face next to him.

"Welcome back," Gwen couldn't help but show her relief.


	6. Be All My Sins Remember'd

**N/A - **if a lot of the dialogue in this one feels familiar, it's not you, it's me. An extra "I don't own it, and Chris Chibnall is responsible for some of the dialogue" disclaimer.

X

"Aspirin?" was Jack's first reaction as his team members explained what has happened.

"Humans! You're brilliant! Using a poison as a drug — you must be the only species in the universe to think of these things!"

"Yeah, well," Owen looked slightly pained. "It was Bilis, actually. And I was — where is he?"

They all looked around. Owen wasn't wrong — Bilis was gone, again.

"I don't care he just saved your life — "

" — Both our lives — "

" — Whatever. This guy is creepy and if we never see him again, all the better."

"Well, there's still the thing with the weevils — "

"Forget the weevils! Weevils aren't important, nobody cares about them! Nobody _ever_ cares about the weevils!"

The Doctor looked almost offended by that comment. "_I_ care about the weevils," he said pointedly.

"Right, sorry. It's just that it's — what time is it?"

"Half past 6. I think it's time everyone went home and got some sleep," Jack said to his team, who smiled in relief and said their goodnights — good mornings, in fact.

"What a mad goodbye party you had," the Doctor smiled at Martha.

"Yeah, the way things tend to happen around you. Goodbye, Doctor," she hugged him.

"Oh, you'll see me again, Martha Jones," he smiled back, and Martha and Tom were gone.

Outside of the Hub, the sun was already high in the sky.

X

Jack returned to the Hub after only a couple of hours. After a brief moment of considering going to his own bed, he decided to answer the invitation in Ianto's eyes and his carefully chosen words and go to his lover's bed, instead. But Ianto was exhausted after 24 hours of Torchwood Madness, the same way the rest of them were, so Jack didn't even wait for him to wake up. It's not that listening to Ianto's gentle snores wasn't fun — if Jack had to listen to anyone snoring, he'd rather it be Ianto — but he just wasn't in the mood for it today. Besides, the aliens don't care he gave everyone the day off. Experience has taught Jack never to assume he would get a nice day of peace and quiet just because he really, really wanted it. And since he didn't need as much sleep as the rest of his team, it made sense he'd stay. Someone had to.

He just assumed it was going to be him alone, not him and the Doctor.

"What are you still doing here?" he asked, unable to contain his surprise, when he noticed the Doctor leaning casually on the sofa, drinking a cup of tea and reading a book. A book which, on closer inspection, turned out to be the Torchwood Manual of Handling Extra Terrestrial Life Forms.

"Interesting read," the Doctor said dryly.

"We don't follow it anymore," Jack answered, and once again wasn't sure who he was angry with more — himself for not keeping this remnant of older, more unpleasant days away from the Doctor's hands, or with the Doctor — for avoiding the question, for acting as if he didn't know they don't follow this nonsense anymore, or for half a dozen other things he'd have been able to think of had he not been anxious about the Doctor's reaction to Torchwood's darker past.

Well, one of these things was definitely the way the Doctor raised his eyebrow just now and resumed reading in that arrogant superiority of his.

"I thought you're fine now. I was sure you'd be gone by the time I got back here."

"Well — " the Doctor sniffled, looking slightly uncomfortable and shifted his gaze from Jack to the books — to the Tardis.

"You know," Jack said, amused, "you're welcome to stay if you want."

"No, it's not that, I've had plenty of this place," the Doctor said immediately. And only as he kept on looking at Jack uncomfortably did Jack truly realise why he stayed.

"You wanted to say goodbye this time?"

"Well, I've been thinking, and you guys let me stay here all this time, I didn't want to be too rude, you know — "

"That's… thank you," Jack said, partly unable to stop his own surprise, partly delivering the Doctor from what was sure to become an even more awkward and uncomfortable attempt at not saying to Jack he does indeed care, after all.

"Thank you," the Doctor answered.

"Any time," Jack said and knew that, for at least now, this was goodbye again.

But he was wrong — just as the Doctor was getting up, Tosh's computer started beeping. The Doctor raised his eyebrow again — but this time in curios amusement, and the man and the alien walked towards the computer, that clearly showed four alien life forms in a warehouse, just outside of Cardiff.

"Do you know what they are?"

"No," the Doctor said, typing some commands into the computer, trying to decipher the signal.

"Care for one last adventure?" Jack asked with a big smile.

X

"Well?" Jack asked again, impatiently.

"They're not moving. It's like they're sitting in four different corners of the building, waiting for us."

Jack turned to look at the Doctor. "A trap?"

"Typical Torchwood! It looks like genuine life signs to me — maybe they're just stuck somewhere, or hurt, or performing the Beeyhanese mating ritual," the Doctor mused. "You always think it's a trap. When did you become so suspicious, anyway?"

"Do you really want me to answer that?" Jack asked — but with a smile. The Doctor smiled back after several seconds — too many to Jack's liking. But still, he smiled. "Anyway," he said, "I think we should stay together."

The Doctor just nodded, and they walked into the warehouse, towards one of the edges. Their alien stayed in its place the whole time.

It took them to actually get there to realise it wasn't an alien at all. It was a bomb. And even though they started running away as soon as they saw it, five seconds just weren't long enough.

X

"Ahhhh!" Jack breathed back to life, the weight of what felt like half the building on his stomach and legs — but no longer on his chest.

"I've got you, I've got you, it's alright," he could hear the Doctor's voice.

"What the hell happened?"

"It was a bomb. You were right, it was a trap, the whole building collapsed."

"Are you alright?" now that Jack could wriggle his toes and breathe a bit deeper, other concerns entered his mind.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Come on, let's get you up and out of here."

Once he was up, Jack took a moment to survey the tattered Doctor in front of him. "How is it," he started, "that when a building explodes on me I die, and when the same thing happens to you, you only end up with a torn suit and some bruises?"

The Doctor chuckled. "I think I have more experience in running away from the explosions," he said, something sparkling behind his eyes, before he turned to look at his suit. "Ah, I like this suit! Anyway, we better try and call the team, it took me a while to get back to it, I'm not sure how much time has passed. They might be worried."

"They're probably still sleeping," Jack said dryly as he did his best to dust his coat from all the debris.

"I don't think so," the Doctor started walking towards the exit. "As I said, quite a lot of time has passed."

He was proven right when the two walked outside — definitely later. And definitely no SUV. "What the — " Jack started, when his vortex manipulator bleeped.

"Er," the Doctor pointed out, as Jack pressed a button.

"Oh! Déjà vu! Or did I say that already."

Jack stared at the image appearing in front of him. "Someone you know, I take it?" The Doctor talked over some of Captain John's words. Jack was about to answer, but then —

"Oh, say hi to the family."

"No, it can't be… Gray?"

John talked some more. The Doctor tried to engage Jack in conversation, but Jack said nothing, could do nothing but stare at the image in front of him. The image of his long lost brother.

"Jack," the Doctor tried again, softly. But if he thought it'd end there, he was wrong.

"Okay, here's what's going to happen," the hologramme said in front of them. "Everything you love, everything you treasure, will die."

"Jack!" The Captain finally heard the Doctor. "We're going to stop him. Have you got that?"

"Yeah — yeah. Listen, talk to the others. Let them know, get them — "

"Rift activities, all over the city," the Doctor dug up one of his gadgets and looked at it critically. "We need to get the team moving."

"That's what I'm saying! Here, take this — " he handed the Doctor his earpiece. "Call them, get them moving, get everything under control."

"Why, where are you going?"

"I'm going to stop him. I was the only one who could ever control him. I know what I'm doing."

The Doctor nodded. "Okay. I'll take care of things here. But if we don't hear from you — "

"Feel free to mount a rescue mission," Jack smiled, despite everything. "I'm going to need a car…"

The Doctor looked at him for just another moment, walking towards the road to catch a ride before going back to the phone.

X

"There you go, pasta a-la Williams!" Rhys put one of the hot plates in front of Gwen, the other in front of his own empty seat. "Only the best to my superhero wife."

"Is this one of your mother's recipes?" Gwen poked her pasta doubtfully.

"Oy! That's an award winning pasta, you know!"

"Yes, I know," she sighed. "Your mum tells me the story every time they come visiting." Which is way too often, if you ask me, she thought but remained quiet.

"Well, it's a good story! You should have seen Mike's face when — "

The only thing Gwen could think when the phone rang was 'thank you, God'. If this is Jack with some crisis, she could kiss him. Well, she wouldn't, but she could —

"Sssh," she told Rhys off when he started ranting about how Jack can't stop calling her and on her day off and she's barely had time to sleep and he can't ask her to go to work today. He had a point of course, but at least she was saved from the Pasta Story. She'd be willing to go to work for that, and make it up for Rhys later.

"Hello?"

But it wasn't Jack on the other end of the line. It was the Doctor. Rhys stopped complaining at once when he saw her expression.

X

They saw the Doctor walking down the road several miles before reaching the location he's given them. Gwen wasn't surprised — he was hardly one to sit idle and wait for someone to come and pick him up. In fact, she was surprised he had let Jack go on his own at all — and it was obvious from the first moment he regretted it.

"Have you talked to the others?" she asked him as he climbed into the backseat of Rhys' small car.

"Yeah — they're looking at strange reports in the city itself. There was a major burst of energy earlier, probably Rift activity — that friend of Jack's?"

"Captain John," Gwen grimaced at the memory of the murdering madman.

"Should have gone with him — you guys need to go to the — "

Gwen's phone rang. Andy on the line, sounding even more nervous than he did when he first phoned her, half an hour ago. " — police station," she completed the sentence. "I know."

The Doctor didn't wait for her to sort out the weevils in the station. As soon as they got there, he left the two of them and started running towards the Plass. But he wasn't fast enough — when John's voice came through their earpieces, the Doctor's frustrated voice was heard almost immediately. But John didn't seem to listen to him.

"… if you don't you'll miss all the fun. By fun I mean carnage — I get them confused."

But even her deep worry for Jack was gone when Gwen saw the explosions. She was left with only sheer, unadulterated terror.

Her training kicked in soon enough. Before a minute had passed she was already calming everyone down, reminding them of their jobs, assigning tasks. But she did it on automatic. Her mind was blank. The only comfort she could rely on was the Doctor — and indeed, through her earpiece, she could also hear his instructions. He sounded like she did — calm, and confident, and in charge. And she couldn't help but wonder, maybe inside he's just as terrified as she was. But she preferred not knowing. That was why she really loved having Jack around — with all his experience, he never seemed to be as frightened as she felt. Always seemed to know what to do. And even he looked at the Doctor for instructions. Better believe this is just a normal day for the Doctor, just daily routine. Better than the alternative — it definitely sounded that way from some of his stories.

"Gwen? How are you getting along?"

Right now, in her ear, his voice sounded calm, and soothing, and sure it would be alright. And all of a sudden, she felt she could breathe again.

"Yeah, we're doing fine, I've asked all the officers to go out to the streets and calm everyone down."

"Good. That's good. I've told Owen and Tosh to go to Turnmill, we were getting some worrying signs from it — and Ianto's on the way over to help you with everything. It'll be alright," he added.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm almost at the Hub, I'm hoping I could track where Jack and John went with the Tardis. Good luck."

"I'm coming with you, she said."

He didn't even try to argue.

X

"My head!"

Gwen shot a glance at the alien and proceeded, a gun in hand. The Doctor tried to protest earlier, told her whatever was happening, going in with guns blazing wasn't the answer, but even he didn't seem to have the mood for arguing about weapons today. And she wasn't going to let her weapon — or her guard — down for a second, not if Captain John was around. She's had enough the last time.

"Ow, my head! What did he do, rip open the Rift?" the Doctor stepped inside, then froze. "Shh," he whispered urgently to Gwen. "There's someone here."

At that exact moment, she heard John's voice behind her. "You took your time," he said, and she turned around in a second and aimed her gun directly at him.

"On your knees!" She shouted.

The time agent just rolled his eyes. "Honestly," he said in mock complaint, "it's just sex, sex, sex with you people."

"Gwen," the Doctor stretched his hand, lowering her gun, and then walked straight towards John. She said nothing — she still had to fight the urge to shoot John dead on the spot, but so far, the Doctor seemed to know what he was doing.

"Where is he?" he asked John quietly, coldly, not removing his eyes off him.

"He's buried alive, somewhere beneath this city, I came back to help you!"

"You're lying," she blurted out. "You bombed this city." She raised her gun back at him — oh, if only the Doctor would get out of the way, and she'd give this bastard what he deserved.

"Listen to me!" John's eyes darted between her and the Doctor. "It's Gray, Jack's brother, that's been doing all this. He placed a bomb on me, molecularly bonded detonator on my skin."

At this, the Doctor jumped towards him, grabbed his wrist, and looked at it. "He's telling the truth, Gwen," he said after a short inspection. "Lower your gun."

"I didn't have to come back here," John said, looking relieved. But Gwen refused to drop her weapon. She got burned once, trusting him, and it almost ended in a disaster. She never would again. "He freed me, told me I could go everywhere I wanted," John tried again. "I could have run, but I chose to come back here."

"Let's — let's assume he's telling the truth. Just this once."

"He thought I was the rescuing hero…" John seemed to be trapped in memory. And then — he screamed in pain, a scream that turned into a laughter. "The molecules are unbonding," he smiled in pain and grabbed the device on his wrist. "Just — like — he promised." He looked at the two of them again. "Free man. Apparently."

"Okay, how do we find Jack then?" the Doctor demanded, and John told him of the isotope, that ring he planted on Jack.

But the scan showed up nothing.

"What?" John looked at the computer screen, then back at the Doctor. "You must be doing something wrong — the transmitter was guaranteed for five millennia!"

"What is it? Where is he then?" Gwen demanded. But the Doctor just smiled a small, weird smile.

"He's no longer there," he said. "He's never been there. When did you say he was buried?" he turned to John.

"Cardiff, first century — but I don't have my vortex manipulator, we can't go back there on our own!"

"Oh, yes we can," the Doctor's face broke into a huge smile and he ran towards the Tardis. "I could use your help," he said from the door. "You know where he is."

"Doctor," Gwen warned.

"I'll be alright. Listen, you stay here, if anything happens, if Gray comes back…" he stepped back from the Tardis towards her. "Someone has to know what's going on, warn the others, do something. You'll do great. Just… be careful."

"Bring him back," she said, at last.

"Yes, Ma'am," he smiled, and entered the Tardis back with John.

Fortunately, Gwen didn't have to sit and do nothing for long. Tosh had contacted her shortly afterwards. She and Owen had reached the Turnmill station, just as the Doctor instructed. And then the weevils showed up.

"Well, this is… different," John commented as the noise of the engines grew stronger and movement could be felt. The Doctor didn't bother answering, just kept on pressing buttons on the console.

"Where did you get this?" John tried again.

"My home planet," the Doctor answered shortly, still doing his best to ignore John.

"And where would that — "

"You're here to help me locate Jack, nothing more," the Doctor said curtly and turned his back at John again.

"Okay," John said quietly. Better not alienate a man who could leave him behind two thousand years into this planet's primitive past.

But when they got there, the Doctor seemed a lot less hostile. And now, he could pick the signal John described loud and clear. Out of seemingly nowhere he grabbed two shovels, and the both of them started digging.

X

Wake up. Something in his mouth. Can't breathe. No air. Can't cough. Can't move. Wake up. Can't claw it away. No air. Wake up. Can't move can't breathe wake up all dark wake up can't cough it out can't move wake up no air no air wake up no air "Ahhh!"

"It's okay, you're fine, breathe, just breathe now, that's the spirit, it's okay."

Jack didn't even say anything. Air. It felt like forever. He couldn't breathe. Just the dirt, time and again, in his mouth, in his nostrils, in his eyes… he grabbed the Doctor and just kissed him.

"What was that for?" the Doctor seemed surprised — and somewhat concerned.

"Just glad to feel alive again," it didn't sound like his own voice, just a deathly whisper, hoarse and difficult. Someone else put a bottle of water into his hand, and he realised he was thirsty, so thirsty… half the bottle was gone before he felt the need to breathe again.

"Thanks," he whispered in a voice that sounded more like his own and looked up to see — John. "Thanks," he said again.

But then it all came back to him. "Gray!" he said and tried to get up — only to fall again.

"Whoa, careful, it's okay," the Doctor caught him and tried to help him up. "We've got the Tardis here, you can take all the time you need."

Even if Jack could master his voice, he would have had a hard time voicing his gratitude to the Doctor.

After a while, he managed to sit up. Another water bottle found its way into his hand, and something to eat. And as his voice came back to normal, he told the Doctor the story of his brother — with John filling in the details he was unaware of. The Doctor nodded every once in a while, deep in thought. But he said nothing, and after a while Jack ran out of things to say, too.

X

They had all the time in the world, but it seemed the Tardis had a sense of timing of its own — as always, really. The noise of the Tardis had distracted Gray just in time to stop him from shooting Gwen, and out of instinct, without a thought, Jack had raised his gun and shot her assailant, his brother.

The Doctor stayed behind, leaned on the Tardis, as he watched his friend rushing towards the fallen man, trying to undo his actions. "It's okay, it's okay, I've got you," Jack whispered, but his aim was too good, and he knew it. And if the Doctor remembered a similar time where their roles were reversed, he said nothing.

Gwen, shaken but very much alive, joined him and John next to the Tardis in silence, staring at her commander as he cradled his dying brother. After a moment, Ianto showed up as well.

It was a long time before Jack let go of the lifeless coprse.

Eventually, he rested the head down gently, so gently, closed his brother's eyes, and turned to wipe his own. None of his friends knew what to say — but as soon as one of them opened his mouth to speak, something else had caught Jack's attention.

"Where are Owen and Tosh?"

Ianto and Gwen exchanged looks, puzzled. They should have been there by now.

"Owen," Gwen touched her earpiece — but it was dead. Something in the Hub was blocking the signal. The Doctor jumped, pressed a key on the computer, and then pressed his own earpiece, the one he took from Jack.

But before he could say Tosh's name, they heard her voice.

" — that date. I guess it just wasn't meant to happen."

"Yeah," Owen replied, wherever the two of them were.

"Tosh?" the Doctor asked softly.

"Doctor," she seemed to have whispered on the comm. "Is he okay?"

"I'm here, Tosh," Jack took the earpiece from the Doctor.

"Good," she said, still so very quietly. "That's good."

"Tosh, where are you?"

"There was a meltdown, in Turnmill. Me and Owen — "

"We can't get out, Jack," Owen's voice again.

The five people in the Hub looked at each other in horror. The Doctor already started walking towards his Tardis, when they could hear an alarm over the comm, and Owen's voice.

"It's starting. Oh, God, it's starting — "

"It's alright," Tosh's voice was muffled, as if buried, and Jack could imagine his two team members holding each other, trying to die just a little less alone. "It's alright."

He looked at the Doctor in horror, his expression urging the time traveller to save the day one more time, but there were things even beyond the Doctor's ability to heal. The earpieces went dead.

X

They all sat in silence, waiting for the blue box to reappear in the Hub. None of them said a word, not even John. But Jack didn't really know what they were waiting for. Indeed, he felt no surprise, only emptiness, when the box finally reappeared, only five minutes later, even if it did feel like so much longer, and the Doctor stepped outside, hair slightly burned, suit more tattered than he remembered, and said that he was sorry, so sorry. Gwen started crying, Ianto sat down heavily, John didn't dare to look in his eyes, and Jack just nodded, unable to speak.

John left first. Jack wouldn't bury Gray's body - only freeze it, together with the other bodies, the bodies of those young men and women who worked in Torchwood this past century — those of them who had a body to be frozen. He ignored John pointing out there was no point to this gesture, that even if something could be worked out, Gray would still be just as wounded and mad. But Jack couldn't bring himself to do anything else. There was something comforting in freezing the body, he thought darkly. Funerals were so final. In the end, John gave up. He hugged Jack, then kissed him, and just disappeared without another word to the rest of the group.

The Doctor surprised Jack again. He stayed a little bit longer.

Just a little bit, though. They were packing Tosh's things, Owen's already in a box, to be stored in the Torchwood Archives, when the computer screen kicked back to life, showing them Tosh's image, talking about toasters and Torchwood and Owen. He smiled in fondness at his dead colleague as the tears ran down Gwen's cheeks freely. None of the three Torchwood survivors noticed the sad look in the Doctor's eyes as he considered them one last time, or heard the ancient engines of his spaceships.

It was ten years before Gwen saw him again.


	7. And The Seventh Brings Return

They'll be burying Chris now. Another of Torchwood's employees would get a real ceremony in a real church and be put in a real grave, six feet under, because they had no more room in their morgue to freeze agents. Gwen Cooper, the head of the Torchwood Institute, looked blankly at the watch, counting the minutes until the body is lowered to its final rest, and wondered when was it she learned to move on from death so quickly. It seemed so bad after Owen and Tosh, but things somehow went back to normal afterwards. Maybe it was Ianto's death… and that morning after, when she found the note, that Jack made that phone call to his friends, far in the stars, because for now he just had enough. Maybe it was Dave or Jeanie or… she didn't know. Gwen buried herself back in the paperwork, hoping to forget all of their names and faces, just for a little bit.

But she couldn't block out the commotion in the Hub as her team was coming back from the funeral. Getting up, ready to shout at them to keep it quiet, just for a bit, just today, because she's trying to work, damn it, she looked up and saw -

"Bilis," she whispered at the old man, whose face never changed.

"We found him lurking outside of the Hub," Marty said, a bit breathlessly.

But Gwen hardly looked at Marty, just at Bilis, who smiled at her in that warm and creepy way of his, that same smile she could never forget.

"What do you want?" she recovered fast, shot that question at him.

"I was just wondering, my dear, whether saving the Doctor's life had the result you wanted?"

"What?" she looked at him, confused.

"But of course, you wouldn't remember. In a way, it has never happened."

"What never happened?"

"Your request," he smiled at her.

"He was supposed to die? When?"

Despite herself, she found herself being sucked back into Bilis' games, whatever they would be.

"Oh, so many years ago."

"When you showed up the second time," it dawned on her. "And gave him that aspirin."

"Yes," he confirmed.

"But it — Tosh and Owen died. Because of him. He sent them to Turnmill."

"I see," Bilis just nodded.

"If the Doctor dies then — "

"They would still be dead, my dear. That is why you asked me to save his life."

Gwen looked at him bitterly. "Well it didn't work. They died, Ianto died… the Doctor's survival made no difference."

"I'm sorry, my dear," Bilis said, and she couldn't be sure whether he was being honest, or just playing her.

But then she had an idea.

"You say we've changed the past before?"

"Yes," he answered simply.

"Could we do it again? Just… prevent the Doctor from ever being there? If he doesn't send Tosh and Owen to their deaths, everything would be different!" She was getting excited with the prospect of the change. Make everything better. Save everyone. And she wouldn't have to be in this job, with the weight of the world on her shoulders, feeling so lost and miserable and small and so very, very alone.

"There is a way," the alien in front of her said slowly. "We could… why, we could go back before. Before the Doctor was captured by Aaron Copley."

Gwen rose now from her chair, all flustered and impatient, seeing the first thing resembling hope in a long, long while.

"Yes! We could just warn him, he'll fly away from Cardiff, never be captured, and everything that happens, it will be different!"

"You understand that if we make this change," Bilis almost sounded cautious, "it would be the last one we can make? Once the Doctor escapes Copley's clutches, there is no way to make sure he is captured again. There is no way of knowing how the past would turn out."

"Anything is better than this," Gwen looked at him. The look on her face was hard, determined, the same determination she learned to adopt, the only way she could survive all this time. "I understand."

"Then I would need your help," he said and smiled. And once again she couldn't trust his smile — but there was no other choice, really. Never any choice. "Hold my hand."

She took his hand, and they were gone.

X

It was a clear evening. The summer breeze was full of scents. The smell of the sea, of fish, of people going dancing and partying. The smell of her lost relationship with Rhys, of friendships and fun and Cardiff! Was that the castle? She forgot how it looked like before the explosion, it felt like such a long time ago — but this was long before, and Cardiff Castle stood there proud, and right in that direction, the Water Tower, back when not all of it rested on her —

But she didn't have time to enjoy the past now. Their aim wasn't Roald Dahl Plass, it was a place further into the city, a place where a blue box stood, unnoticed by anyone — anyone but her.

Bilis said it's better he stayed behind. The Doctor wouldn't trust him, he'd be able to feel there's something different about him. But he'd trust Gwen, he's already met her. It's alright, he said, go in. Warn him. Tell him to go into the stars, the past or the future, somewhere far away.

She didn't even knock before entering. Only then it occurred to her the door was never supposed to open up so easily.

He didn't hear her walking in. He was standing there, staring into space, at nothing in particular. The jacket of his suit was tossed over the console, soaking wet. His hair was wet as well, as was the white shirt he was wearing.

"Doctor?" she asked, hesitantly. It took him several moments to register her voice, to turn around and look at her. There was something almost scary in his eyes. So sad and lonely.

"Gwen Cooper," he said at last.

"Yeah, that's me. I'm a friend of Jack."

He nodded. But he didn't ask her what she was doing there, didn't try to pretend everything was alright, did nothing of all those things she remembered so well.

"You have to go!" she blurted out in the end.

"What?"

"You have to go. They're — there are these people. After you. Trust me. You need to leave, now."

"It's okay, I'm — "

"No, it's not! Trust me, it's not! Doctor, please. For everyone's sake. Just — "

He nodded slowly, once — and then seemed to catch himself, at last.

"Cardiff's a bit boring, anyway! Nothing to see here! What do you say, the Great and Bountiful Human Empire? Finally seeing Poosh? I know, New Zealand - that'd be a good idea. Don't you think?"

She couldn't help but smile. He'd be alright, in the end. She remembered some of Jack's drunken stories — that was when he started talking about his adventures with the Doctor, when he was drunk. Or after the Daleks showed up.

The Doctor would be fine.

"I'll go, then," she pointed at the door. Something made her heart pound a bit strongly, just for a second — maybe she'd get lucky, maybe the Doctor would offer to take her away, like he did Jack, take her away from all of this, see the stars… but he didn't. He just smiled at her, genuine affection in his smile.

"Goodbye, Gwen Cooper. And thank you."

"Any time," she smiled. She could never forget Owen and Tosh, but she never quite could hate him for it, not when she remembered his expression that day. "Goodbye, Doctor," and she walked outside of the box, just to watch it disappear, with Bilis at her side.

The alien entity known as Bilis Manger looked for a second longer at the space where the box used to be, and then to his right, where Gwen Cooper stood only a second ago, a Gwen Cooper who never existed now. He smiled and disappeared himself.

X

Here is Captain Jack Harkness of the Torchwood Institute, standing together with Doctor Owen Harper as the two are trying to save the life of Doctor Martha Jones – inside the Pharm, a medical facility exploiting extra terrestrial life forms on Earth. Needless to say, they are all within the vicinity of Cardiff.

Three of the Captain's other operatives are exploring the compound itself – or, rather, the place where the aliens are being kept. In Captain Jack's righteous anger, he's about to order all of the captive creatures killed – a killing of mercy, preventing the poor things any more suffering. He really does believe he's doing them a favour, because he knows he would never be able to bring them back home, and would probably also be unable to undo the damage already done to their bodies.

Under certain circumstances, in a different world, he never gives the order. Before he has the chance, he hears the report of one of his operatives, Toshiko Sato, telling him of a captured alien, one who looks so much like a man in a brown suit, and hears his medic ask of blue police boxes. However, under these particular circumstances, things don't exactly go according to plan. He gives that order, the compound is brought down, weevils, mayflies and other creatures die, and so do Doctors Copley and Harper, one a renegade medical manager, another a mortal Torchwood operative who was in the wrong place – in front of a gun – and in the wrong time – directly after that gun was fired.

In a desperate attempt to save Doctor Harper's life, he runs to the darker parts of the city, the parts most of the human inhabitants of Cardiff don't even know exist, and finds the artifact he is looking for, the way of bringing Owen Harper back to life.

But it isn't long until he dies for the second, final time. When the city is in ruins and Jack is in a race against time to save his city, his brother and his team, Owen Harper finds himself locked inside the Turnmill Nuclear Power Plant, trying to save the city. Toshiko Sato dies as well, bleeds to death on the floor after his brother shot her, and they find her too late, way too late.

They keep on going, just the three of them. Gwen Cooper, Ianto Jones and Captain Jack Harkness. But something is missing. They find other people; three are not enough to save the world. But even that is not enough. When they discover another alien terrorist cell, hiding within Cardiff, Jack is worried, he knows they might be walking into a bloodbath. And he is right — when they go back to the hub, Ianto Jones is no longer with them. Another frozen body in the wall, another dead friend. Gwen goes home that night, but even holding Rhys so tight it hurts isn't enough to calm her down. Eventually, she dresses up again and goes back to the Hub — only to discover a blue box there.

"I have to, just for a bit," Jack says, and she understands, understands all too well. He hugs her, and that mythical stranger just stands there, looking at them — no, she realises at some point, looking at _her_. Good luck, he says before he goes back into his box, shuts the door behind him and her Captain, and disappears. Good luck, Gwen Cooper.

They recruit more people, and more people die. And each one that dies hurts just a little bit more, because now they're her responsibility, and just a little bit less, because she's getting more and more used to it. And Rhys tries his best, she knows it, and still she can't help but begrudge him every once in a while, because he doesn't have to deal with what she does.

Because he doesn't understand.

She goes home every day just a little bit later. He's becoming more and more impatient. One day she doesn't bother going back home at all. It doesn't matter anyway, because he's not there anymore.

They die, and she keeps on living. Somehow, she cheats death, over and over again. And life becomes a blur of people and aliens and new recruits, and every time she gets that spark with someone, even if it's not that same comfortable joy as the one she had with Rhys, or the exciting chemistry and sex she had with Owen, or just the mad attraction she's always felt for Jack. But it's something, and it's hers, until the inevitable time she loses it again.

X

They'll be burying Chris now. Another of Torchwood's employees would get a real ceremony in a real church and be put in a real grave, six feet under, because they had no more room in their morgue to freeze agents. Gwen Cooper, the head of the Torchwood Institute, looked blankly at the watch, counting the minutes until the body is lowered to its final rest, and wondered when was it she learned to move on from death so quickly. Chris was the first one, the first one since Rhys she felt anything even close to love for, but now he's dead, another dead friend and lover. She held back the tears, wiped her eyes, took a sip from her coffee, and went back to her paperwork.

No good fairy showed up. No wise old saviour, to tell her of a way to get out of this life of hers, the life she hated. She had that dream, every once in a while. Finding a way out. Finding a way to make it all better again. But that's children's story, fairytales, not real life. Sometimes she just needed a way out of real life, because it was getting too much.

The rest of them were coming back now, she could hear them. None of them dared entering her office — they all knew how close she was to Chris, how important he was to her. None of them really felt like working, so they all cleared out soon. Marty popped his head into her office before going away, asked if everything was okay. If she needed anything.

"I'm fine, Marty. Thank you," she answered.

"Okay," he nodded. "We'll be back tomorrow."

"Have a good night."

But she couldn't go back to her paperwork. She missed Chris.

And now she knew what she should do.

She picked up her phone and dialed the number — she didn't even know if it would still work. She hadn't looked at the number for so many years. Hadn't tried it, no matter how often she wanted to. Maybe she was too afraid of the answer.

But she could hear the ringing signal on the other side. It was still active, and then he answered the phone.

"Hello? Yes. How are you? Me? I'm — I'm good. You know me. Listen, I've been thinking… I know we haven't talked for so long, but maybe… yeah… I know. Maybe a coffee?"

Her face broke into a smile when her ex-husband gave his answer. "Great! That's great! Yeah, I'm right next to it, I could be there in twenty minutes. I'll see you then, Rhys. Twenty minutes. Great. Bye."


End file.
